Painting is my meditation.
Dancing colors feel like freedom and connection.
I believe that painted strokes and marks can become one's personal language. Mine is honed from 40 years of these brush strokes, collaged layers of travel relics, music, script, and photographs that meld with the acrylics, pencil, crayon, charcoal, and beeswax. I hope the images land in a harmony that feels worn and new all at once.
I am intrigued by the universality of our humanity as it transcends distance, time and culture. The fiercely protective nature of a mother in Nepal, Bolivia or Italy recalls my own. My inquiry into similarities and disparities in the global consciousness prompts me to keep traveling and striving for a deeper understand through painting.
Unexpected collisions of color or marks inform my next instinctive move. Sometimes the art supplies come to life. And if they do transform, I hope they honor the past, connect with others, and pass around a sense of freedom and joy.
My process
I paint and draw and layer and scrape and sand. I usually work with acrylic paints, watercolors, crayons, melted beeswax, and pencils on wood panels.
On the base level of the panel, I often collage photographs (of relatives or unidentified mysterious faces), travel relics, handwritten letters, patterns, maps, recipes, objects of devotion, shards of communication in other languages, or other random handiwork collected from travels. While the collaged bits are sometimes unrecognizable beneath the layers of paint and wax, I know they have instructed the subsequent images and I like the idea that these expressions of others' hands meld with mine.
The delight is in the surprises that show up when I scratch, sand or scrape the surface to uncover some interesting shape or create a moment I didn't expect. Often the materials themselves tell the story.
