ARTIST STATEMENT

 

“My paintings are about expressing a visual experience that challenges and communicates with a sense of mystery.  Mystery is a human trait and curious characteristic where not everything is easily explainable.

 

As a painter of fine art, I am in a constant state of challenging myself in technique, subject and mediums. By allowing myself to not be afraid to grow, I can take that necessary risk and journey of self discovery. I cannot label myself as particular type of painter.  I swing from total abstraction to gestural figurative and at times tightly rendered realism.   Sometimes I have a direct idea in mind and go after it and then other times I begin a painting with a journey into the unknown, where getting lost becomes the answer to which direction to take.  I find the moment I’m lost is when I really discover the enjoyment of painting and who I am.  I start by making gestures with colors and shapes, adding and subtracting abbreviated images and embracing the unpremeditated. At times I use automatism, that is, drawing or painting in the subconscious with no preconceived composition in mind.  I use my innate passion for abstraction with fragmented strokes and color resulting in a glimpse of what might be. My early education in art school and with realist painters has given me the creative ability to weave in partial realism when I feel it works with a particular piece.

​Most of the time I use either oil or acrylic and occasionally some assemblage of painting, my own photography, cut outs, journal pages, newspaper, fabric, and other applications. It is a process that I have embraced since my early days in art school. Other times it is simply about the paint and what I can do with it.”