ARTIST STATEMENT

Nature is my generative force, creative pursuit my constant companion.  As a lifelong practitioner of the arts, steeped in theory, practice, and tradition, I seek out new structures within which to play. The miniscule, microscopic and the macroscopic dynamics of natural forces drive me. Momentary encounters diffract and open pathways of flow into and out of a trajectory, each piece an investigation of observations and curiosities, a progression from one work to the next. Space is in constant flux. Color and pattern are my metaphors for natural rhythms and nature’s underlying mysteries.  Color relationships generate movement and space. The works flow from the landscape, land- desert- mountains and water, or distilled to earth and sky. In juxtaposing warm and cool colors, areas fall away and re-enter the frame in a spectral continuum providing a point of departure for the contemplation of our relationship to the nature of creation.

My underlying interest in the tradition of the modernist grid drew me towards the study of natural pattern and then to the science of fractal geometry.  I began to understand how this non -Euclidian geometry could further inform my work. My pieces did not claim to represent the complicated mathematics developed by Benoit Mandelbrot in the 1970’s but only the essence of it. My interest began by exploring the patterns and compositions that could be developed. I first constructed compositions based on some of Mandelbrot’s diagrams and then left the construct to allow for the compositions to find themselves. This geometry is in all natural systems; for example, the branching sequence of trees and river systems is not dissimilar to that of the human nervous system.  Through the work I began to see the relationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm and how the two scales can be generated from a single composition.

At times I fell away from the structure and followed my interest in color, light and space.  The Cosmic Landscape series was inspired by works of Caravaggio and I sought to create abstract images that glowed from within based on the spectrum. I made twenty ink drawings on mylar and made twenty aquatint plates in a 20-inch square format. Working these plates into various compositions printing them in different sequential combinations. What resulted was an otherworldly space.

Each new image evolves from my previous work. I began by overlaying the Cosmic Landscape images with an irregular crystalline grid and then transforming them digitally into new compositions. By transforming the grid into a crystallin pattern and adding curves and variation in size it gave the compositions a sense of movement and the fourth dimension of time on the two-dimensional surface.  I find this to be an engaging and creative process, utilizing the computer as my sketchbook as I had used my camera in the past. After developing digital sketches, I draw the outline of the forms within the composition on transparencies in order to project and transfer them onto the panels. These line drawings become the matrix for the prints and the forms within the paintings. By investigating the same structure in two different ways, shape in the painting, and line in the prints, I find they create polarity within this sense of place. The prints are rooted in the terrestrial and the origin of nature, the paintings evoke the Celestial and moments of dissolution.

I paint like a printmaker, using stencils, masks and rollers and using printmaking inks as the medium. Working in a nonlinear continuum every piece is informed by previous work. My large, diffused paintings, painted intermittently while doing the hard-edge work, are made by splattering printer’s inks onto canvases while using stencils to interfere and build composition. By using proprietary interference inks, the diffused paintings appear to be lit from within. The overspray from making the large canvas works is the foundation of my smaller panels.  I place the small panels below the larger canvas and allow for the image to begin, then I respond.