My work is contemporary and figurative. Through image-making, I explore what it means to be a human being and to be part of the universal human experience, touching on relationships between people, with nature, and with the environment around us. I see myself and others in a constant cycle, always fracturing, fragmenting, and reassembling ourselves over time. All my work—both art and writing—falls somewhere on this experiential spectrum.
When I begin to paint, I imagine myself walking on a beam of light. I work completely intuitively and without reference to anything around me. I look at the blank canvas and simply begin to draw what I “see.” After sketching the image in pencil, I patch in color. I choose acrylic paint because it dries quickly so that I can paint out and paint over, working in a collage-like fashion. I can also use acrylics to create a stained-glass effect by hand-rubbing areas with very, very thin layers of color.
I know I am on the right track when I feel the presence of some energy, then come into relationship with the canvas as it begins to communicate itself to me. As I transform the original vision, the final piece emerges. I never begin a painting with an idea. The ideas come later.
These 9” by 12” paintings, part of a larger series titled Relationships, are the result of a special challenge I set for myself in 2019. I’d been working on much larger canvases, and I wanted to make smaller, more intimate, almost miniature works. I hoped to prove that a small painting could have as great an impact as a large one.