Artist Statement
| My work almost always begins with something that interests me for a purely visual reason, a desire to exploit some aspect of colour, light, shape, line, various media and approaches to composition. I'm equally interested in representational and abstract subjects. I often carry a camera to record a particular colour combination, an object or a scene that could lead to something. | ||
Tree of Dreams |
My process is often slow. Some pieces are set aside for weeks or months and then resumed, with an outcome quite different from their inception. For example, the etching, Tree Spell, grew out of a small oil sketch, Tree of Dreams, itself based on a photograph I'd taken of a moss-hung live oak.
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Tree Spell |
The sugar-lift process, which allows for painterly brushwork directly on the printing plate to create the image, seemed ideal to depict a huge, contorted tree out of a dream or a fairytale. But I imagined a happy fairy tale. Via some added line etching and a bit of red chine collé, two cardinals are charmed by the Tree Spell--a happy fairytale, on the assumption that most of us are buoyed by even the merest dot of red. | |
| Increasingly, I'm interested in recycling materials to make art. My series of woven collages is constructed from magazines, newspapers, other found papers, and my own works on paper. Recently, I noticed some large masses of balled-up masking tape lying around and made two sculptures, the Whimsies. I plan to add to the series whenever the masking tape rubbish reaches critical mass. | ||
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| I've also found some ancient drawings made at age 14, when I hid out in my room making coloured pencil pictures of women with blonde pony tails and big breasts, along with a box containing a dessicated high school prom corsage, and a quite hilarious diary. Material for a collage? Could be. | ||
| My inspirations and influences in the mighty river of artistic accomplishment have come from a great many sources. In my museum and gallery going, I regularly encounter artists whose work thrills me. Most recently, at the Whitney Museum in New York, I saw a retrospective of the late American artist, Jay Defoe, whose work I had previously seen only in books. I was stupefied by the range, humour, invention and sheer beauty of her art. It goes without saying that I've learned a lot from artists who have taught me – you know who you are and if you're reading this, I thank you. | ||
