personal statement
I paint from the inside out. All that I am and I know and I have seen and have felt influence what emerges. My paintings combine collaged bits of travel debris, photographs and maps with batik, beeswax, pencil, watercolor and acrylic paint layered on handmade birch panels. I draw, paint, add wax, scrape, carve, melt and uncover various elements as the piece takes life. I am interested in the ways that paint and paper and wax and wood meet and evoke emotion, especially a sense of fabricated authenticity or reality, or the timeless, sincere quality of ancient or primitive crafts. The creative process occurs for me like meditation or prayer.
The language of my artwork continues to develop as I struggle to achieve clarity and balance on the panel and in my soul. While my earlier paintings were more directed by visual stimuli gleaned from the surprises of travel and disparate cultures, my newer works are also influenced by a homebound and grounded reality: motherhood. Layers of paint, collage and wax peeled away might reveal both monasteries in Nepal and playgrounds in Sacramento. My search for un iversal truth and personal reality continues in a world swirling with daunting inequities and immense beauty.
