Artist Statement
I could best summarize my work by T.S. Eliot's words: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins." Ironically, he uses fragments to support ruins which themselves are fragments of a once complete whole. But somehow, this collecting of pieces and scraps is restorative. My work attempts to do the same, creating a sense of cohesion and order from haphazard images. I am interested in constructing wholeness from brokenness and connection from disparity. My work is the experimental use of formal elements of shape, color, line, and texture. I add and subtract imagery with abandon and restraint creating a visual paradox.
Painting Process
Working in abstraction I use line, shape, color, texture and pattern. I begin with a series of loose gestural shapes, splashes and large blocks of color. I introduce thin layers of paint to let each mark, shape and color inform the next visual choice. I build images with no fixed notion of how a finished product will appear. Working on an average of seven paintings at a time, I rotate pieces while I set up visual challenges within each one. When my command of art is confronted by unknown conceptions, I am propelled in my creative process. I create my own game of sorts. I move between a series of puzzles as I explore relationships of foreground, background, subject and context. I experiment intensely by adding and subtracting paint, scraping through layers of color, and applying printmaking and paper cutting techniques. As I paint I walk the border of play and discipline. In the journey of a painting, I move back and forth between a freewheeling exploration of color, gesture and mark making, and the assertion of control as I establish an underlying structure of composition.