In my painting there is a sense of luxury, rooted in the abundance of nature. As a child I frolicked in the outdoors, camping in the forests, swimming in Santa Cruz, and running around my family�s 80-acre farm in Minnesota. I spent my early adult years in New Orleans and Miami, sultry sub-tropical cities with spicy cuisine and brilliant colors. But not until I lived in Portland, Oregon, with its gorgeous gardens lining the avenues, did I begin to translate nature�s sensuality and fecundity into my art.
My work references flowers, vines, trees, seed pods, and other vegetative motifs I find in the world around me, as well as in antique floral prints, wall paper, tiles, tapestries, and jewelry design. In an artist residency in the Czech Republic, I lived and painted in an 18th Century palace�an immersion in the splendors of the baroque and rococo, which impressed upon me the ties between the decorative arts and the narrative, myth-making power of contemporary abstract painting.
I have always been a colorist, so when I began to work monochromatically a few years ago, I saw my white-on-white paintings as pure, meditative, and sacred. Working all in white also enables me to concentrate the viewer�s visceral response on the paintings� surfaces, which reach out from the picture plane and engage the senses. In my studio I use tools to braid, mold, and weave paint into shapes that are sometimes soft and graceful, sometimes spiky and dynamic.
After the shapes are created and positioned, I envelop them in sheets of acrylic paint, until their contours rise like islands from a glassy-smooth sea. The finished works are painterly and sculptural, minimalist and maximalist, serene and dramatic, with undertones of danger and seduction. In our increasingly detached digital age, I aim to bring viewers back into touch with the opulent physicality of art, and to remind them of the beauty within themselves. |
