Woods has been described as “a postmodernist Norman Rockwell”. Whether parodying Coca Cola, the Gap, Burger King, Calvin Klein or Dairy Queen, Woods, a self-taught painter from Chilliwack, BC, paints himself, his wife and friends into his visual narratives using a high-realist photographic style. His images have a comfortable, neighbourly feeling, yet clearly are filled with uncertainty, incommunicability and anarchy.

Woods has shown at Diane Farris since 1991. His eagerly-awaited new body of work, The Magic Hour - Part One, accesses the visual language of car advertising. The series originated during Woods' mixed media project Billboard, in which he considered the gulf between what car advertisers promise and what cars actually deliver. The title, Magic Hour, is derived from a photographer’s term describing the blissful quality of ambient light immediately following sunset. The lighting is popular with car advertisers for the way it conjures complimentary touches of glory and wistfulness. Unfortunately, utopic visions of car ownership more frequently are belied by real-life actualities of road rage, construction zones, escalating gas prices and traffic jams. Woods’ narratives, although set in warm and glowing light, therefore contain symbols of war and conflict: swords and shields, bows and arrows, military generals and armored knights.