Proof 9 [catalogue excerpt] by Katy McCormick
writing on the group exhibition "Proof 9" at Gallery 44, Toronto

“In my earlier series Clouds, I photographed directly from a computer screen in order to create a decidedly ‘low-fi-hi-tech image.’ … With the Science Drawings, I included finer details, more drawing elements, and smaller text … still retaining the original photo’s exaggerated pixelation and distortion … the Science Drawings focus on themes of alienation, abandonment, and loss, (usually with a twice-removed reference to a pop-song lyric, self help passage, or other popism/truism). In combining these misanthropic sentiments with humour, brightly coloured scientific models/charts/graphs, and pat explanations, my intention has not been to reduce, but to diffuse … these seemingly solitary experiences as universal paradigms.”
Jealousy, nervousness, nostalgia, inspiration, this is the stuff of our emotions – how we feel. Trying to quantify such sensations, let alone illustrate them visually, graphically, becomes an absurdity, yet we feel compelled at times to do so. Newman captures in fine humour the silliness of such compulsion, made all the stranger in light of our highly tuned technologies.