Making art is both a humble and a hopeful endeavor. The act of creating, while considered one of the highest forms of thinking, is a risky business and one that requires persistence, fortitude, a tolerance for risk-taking and the understanding that our initial intent is not always what the artwork wants to become and will become.
My recent series, Innerscapes, expresses my interest in abstract landscape; landscape that is a reflection of an internal stimulus, grounded in emotion and a search for hope and constancy. While my art is sometimes inspired by my actual environment and my perception of the earthly landscape, it is more often in response to an internal subject or a mental landscape. What drives this work is my steadfast belief in the persistence and resiliency of the human legacy, those remnants that we leave behind and those that we reach for in our need for a sustainable hope. The images that emerge from my work are, for me, an acknowledgment of that which is familiar and beloved. They are, like my process, rooted in optimism.
This process, most recently using oil and cold wax medium, but at times, acrylic, collage, or mixed media, begins as a conversation with the material; a dialogue that starts with the building of layers of color and texture resulting in a series of iterations. This back and forth, push and pull process helps me to determine the direction that I will take, what parts of the painting to leave behind and what part of the painting to further develop. It is as intentional as it is intuitive.
Even when working representationally or from observation, I approach the process from an emotional foundation. I respond to each subject in a visceral way that seeks to convey mood, emotion and movement. I feel that this emphasis both informs my abstract art and helps me to approach my work in a way that economizes the mark-making and reduces the image to its essential self. And while I do love to draw from observation, particularly the human form, somehow I keep returning to the work that is an expression of lands and places unknown and untouched. It is, in a way, an expedition and an acknowledgment of an internal world that is both real and elusive, hopeful and reminiscent; a world that wants and needs to be seen and responded to.
It is always my hope that the viewer will find a connection and something that resonates when viewing my work, but what each of my paintings mean to me cannot, and should not, be exactly what it means to the viewer. This triad of components; artist, material, and viewer is amorphous and fluid in a way that makes me want to always pursue those ever-changing connections.