DIRECT ANIMATION Animation belongs in the world of time arts. The still image, packed as it may be with impending force and pregnant with meaning, only exists in the world as a captured moment. Animation must happen over time. On the screen it is a cascade of images that play to our persistence of vision. It is work that is meant to be seen unstopped, never fixed, juxed together. It is serial images flashed twenty-four frames to the second; symbols, signs, lines, and gestures we decipher in the context of one to the other. It is a timed reading. Animation is also a world reframed. It is an opportunity and a challenge to say and to see that which may be and to find, perhaps within the scant thirty lines of a twelfth century text, the unspoken, the unnamed and roll it, still heavy with the stuff of heroes, into the darkened room. In the medium of direct animation, the animator creates all that appears on the screen. By drawing and painting directly on the film, the mise en scene is unfettered from the tangible realities of lumber, stone, and fabric. Researched "realities" like the look of a cottage or the clothing of an era are evoked with an aesthetic simplicity and an eye for palette, line and texture. It is frame by frame cinematic conjuring, a non-realism that transfuses the recognized. For the maker it calls for a close focus. In the end it’s about sequencing images to create intensity of experience. As Canadian master animator, Norman McLaren pointed out, what makes animation work is the decision made on how much to change the image from one frame to the next. The art, he says, lies at "manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between the frames." In large part this work is concerned with transition and with linkage. It is cinematic yet unfettered, as depth of field becomes the shifting ground for transformational opportunities - into, onto, through, and across the frame. Drawn small and projected large, the line is bold and, at times, pulls the viewer through the piece. Every frame is individually colored and unique, as if, with each frame, every pixel is refreshed – infusing the work with a vitality and vigor that seemingly knows no bounds. Rose Bond, February 1998 PRINT-FRIENDLY VERSION

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