ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In 1996 I left the art world to become more fully a human being. My teaching and painting had reached an impasse where I no longer felt I was true to my call. In the subsequent 9 years I raised children, became a therapist, and dived into my Zen and Christian spiritual practice.

In 2005 I began painting again.  My new paintings are intimate contemplations on the nature of mind.  Starting with an elusive flash of an image, the desire to communicate an idea follows - streams of thought dry up, old structures are imperfectly resurrected, thus continually creating new relationships. Mirroring the mind through intentional (linear) and chance (random/associative) actions, I trace the process of thought. These “thoughts” are constructed from diverse painting languages that function inter-dependently, like organisms in an ecosystem. One thought is obliterated by another only to be partially retrieved through reductive process. Another thought arises in response to this revelation and so on.  These mental habitats maintain a tenuous equilibrium. Reveries conflate, break apart, and reconstitute in a continual realignment of order and projected meaning.

As I have become increasingly aware of the increasing degradation of our environment, I have found it increasingly difficult to use toxic solvents in my oil painting. In 2007 I began experimenting with making my own egg tempera paint from local, free range chickens.  A childhood fascination with alchemy has come full circle, as each pigment’s unique nature “transforms” when reacting to the “living” binder of the fresh egg emulsion. After decades of making paintings, the process has become new again, intimate, and mysterious.