Artist's Statements

Dresses

Joyce Carol Oates has written: "For what passes so swiftly and irrevocably into what was, no human claim can be of the least significance." If there is a poignance about these paintings, it is implicit in the transitoriness of all things. The painting becomes a silent record of moments and feelings past."

The absence of the figure has left only memories of the gestural life force of warm flesh and bones. This presence is evoked by building thin layers of glazes that create ephemeral spatial illusion as well as physical substance that stands in for the spiritual presence--or absence--of the human figure. Human scale paintings convey memory and feeling with pigment, light and color. Each dress tells a story.

My work is informed by feelings and emotions visible through imagery as metaphor and through the physicality and color of pigment to express mood. The process is about an exploration of relationships, both formal and psychological, and the discovery of emotional states achieved by the handling paint.

Muybridge Figures

The motifs I have chosen to paint are almost always about the human figure. I make feelings and emotions visible through image as metaphor and through the physicality and color of pigment. The process is about pushing an exploration of relationships, both formal and psychological.

This figurative series is based on the Edweard Muybridge motion studies of the late 1800's. They have become for me a vehicle and metaphor for the expression of emotional states of being. The paintings begin through an impulsive selection that journals my life as well as my observations of others' experiences. The gesture becomes an important expressive response to these states of being. Layering glazes and building surface then become a meditative process of distilling emotions. Only when color, light and space feel balanced is the painting complete. Through the surface of glazes and varnish, the narrative beneath becomes visible.