Artist Statement

 

I find working with saturated color to be a natural anti-depressant and recent turbulence in my life has pushed me to ‘up the dosage’.  Stretching the palette to ‘louder’ brights and playful metallics –that I previously thought were too gimmicky, I discovered there are no bad colors, only bad contexts.

 

Taming intense color is a limited proposition. You must put aside what you think you know and allow yourself to become a conduit for this ancient primal force. Unease led to awe as I relinquished control and tapped into color’s pulse, speed and vibrating musicality –the frustrated musician within me playing notes of pigment with my brush. Multi-layered compositions such as these require interplay of background and foreground, weaving the dancers in and out until the wall between the panels, and even the willing viewer, become part of the stage.

 

About The Diptychs: “LONG DIVISION”

 

The space left between the diptychs is a metaphor for the constant interruptions of modern life.  Technology has made us reachable at all times and our familial responsibilities remove the option of leaving the grid.  Like electronic taps on the shoulder, calls, texts and emails carve any task into a series of plodding stops and restarts. These divided, yet unified works, are meant to illustrate our ability to overcome the discord—to change the perspective and eventually see the gaps as part of the whole.

 

“FLORAL GRUNGE”

This series began in October of 2008, ‘Breast Cancer Awareness’ month. Pink ribbons had me thinking of friends who had been stricken by breast cancer and faced with so much uncertainty. Even while struggling with such things as hair loss and mastectomies, their beauty was not quelled. I became inspired to explore the idea of irrepressible, organic beauty and delved into the bold pinks and reds that I associate with energy and life.

“STOPPING BY WOODS”

I stumbled upon “Woods” by experimenting with my striations of color on the vertical, rather than the horizontal arrangements I was creating for the diptychs. When images of the woods began to emerge, I decided to follow that lead and the result was very definite, expressive landscapes that still allowed the palette to come forward as the overall subject matter. The titles are an homage to Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” which speaks to the quiet observance of one’s surroundings and the incredible sensory abundance all around us if we take time to notice. I realized this was the same way I feel about color – and how natural color in the landscape feeds my soul every day.