Personal Statement

I love to paint. I viscerally enjoy applying the color and the feeling of paint sliding under a brush or palette knife. My paintings tell a narrative of life experiences, emotions, and places I have traveled to. My primary subject has been the landscape- even as a starting point for abstract and collage work, I am inspired by nature. I am obsessed with the golden color of afternoon light, color juxtapositions, the emotionally evocative quality of textured surfaces, and the poetic of rhythmic repetition of shapes and patterns. My painting technique freely integrates the accidental forms that emerge as ambiguous familiar objects. The viewer can then project their own meaning and history upon these mysterious, abstract, composite areas. My goal is to create paintings where you feel that the more you look –the more you see; not boring.  Each time you see the work, something new can be noticed; even with the same elements a new interpretation can be made, as the eye and brain instinctively make order out of chaos.

I like to choose a color story to begin a painting. I find that working with a limited palette organizes the surface creating color harmony. I then play with the materials. If it is an oil painting, I mix lots of color variations, loosening up and seeing what grabs me. If it is mixed media work, I select, sort ,experiment, and manipulate lots of different rice and handmade papers, personal photography, found objects , maps, sheet music, beads, leaves, fabrics, self made trinkets, paint ,graphite, India ink and textured acrylic gels and mediums.

I work in layers, building subtle complexity and richness to the work. Most paintings are worked on over many sessions. I review and react to the new composition every time I start another layer. For oil painting I use brushes and palette knives, as well as credit cards, rags, silicon color shapers, and paper towels to add and remove paint. The subtractive painting is my favorite part of that process, be it carving in with color shapers, or wiping back to “find the image” with a rag.

I feel I have barely scratched the surface of painting and printing. I wake up every day eager to get back to the colors and play. I look forward to my M.F.A. program to expand and learn much more about myself and art.  After graduating, I want to teach art and painting to post secondary students in addition to continuing to grow as an artist.