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My images are inspired by a metaphysical exchange
that occurs between the seer and the seen, which then transforms
the seer. As a young child, I climbed up into the canopies of
birches, pines, and cedar trees, so that I could watch the sky
through flickering leaves and feel the crooked support of the
bark beneath my body. The sensations of the physical, intertwined
with the intangible, felt transfixing and risky as I balanced
within the branches, alternately drawing me up towards the clouds,
so expansive and ephemeral, and down towards the earth, so hard
and permanent. I was captivated by a shifting energy that flowed
between concrete things and changed my perception of them. The
sense that ordinary perception could, at any moment, be a vehicle
for extraordinary recognition and endless wonder, would become
the subject of my art.
Drawing, painting and printmaking is a way to swim
around in a soup that is both earthly and mysterious. Michael
Dailey’s color fields and Joan Miró’s early work
have provided traction for my own. I have personalized an abstract
vocabulary that engages shape, color and line with shifting spatial
depth, in order to ask questions that float, wordlessly and endlessly,
in the back of my mind
When I begin to work, I don’t know how many
incarnations the forms will take or if the experience will lead
to a satisfying resolution. Shapes appear, disappear, or are on
their way to disappearing. Edges sharpen or blur. Color separates
or fuses. A finished piece is the result of many decisions about
what will remain visible and what will vanish, so a conclusion,
when it comes, is surprising and poetic. In this way, I discover
a dynamic equilibrium.
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