Artist Statement

     I am interested, through my artwork, in presenting the self, body and space as an unfolding process of movement. Our bodies and ourselves are unique mysteries to be explored and discovered, rather than depicted as external objects. I see that we are an ongoing process of movement and energy - our thoughts, our feelings and emotions, our dreams, perceptions and magination, everything can be seen from within as forms of movement. My work seeks to express these profound qualities of our inner life, both conscious and unconscious, that are accessed through the primal resources of sensation and connection to our essential fluid origins, mystery or soul.
     My background as a classically trained figure painter is a foundation for the creative expression of fluid movement as the language of the body. Often a central figure or several figures are portrayed moving in relationship to a felt space; fields and masses of rich vibrant color, light and darkness, form the context out of which the figure emerges. Here there is no separation between figure and environment, body and mind, foreground or background. The figures move in and out of various dimensions and states of embodiment, form and formlessness, consciousness and unconsciousness.
     My art is a unique blending of both figurative and abstract elements that work together to weave inner landscapes of far-reaching complexities and dimensions. My art is more modern than purely traditional. My influences span ancient to contemporary art, my interest is in creating art about our spirituality and our humanity that speaks to what is alive within us, beyond the personal or cultural narrative or story.
     I bring to the creative process a variety of abstract techniques of layering oil paint over acrylic ground with brush and palette knife. Experimenting with different thickness and transparencies of paint suggests a coming into a particular form and dissolving into the vast unknown. Scraping away the external layers allows what is underneath to be revealed and liberated. I may combine collage elements, photographs, images of parts of the body - tissue, bone, blood, molecular and cellular structures, etc. with textures of sand or clay in with the oil paint which imbues a timeless primordial atmosphere to the painting.
     Through the creative process of painting, I am drawn, as in meditation, to an internal sense of fluidity and to many possibilities for personal transformation in the body. This inquiry into the range of our experience of pure being leads me to explore hidden dimensions of our implicit responses to life, of our relationships with ourselves, of our interconnectedness to each other and to the cosmos. The journey of making art over the years has always been for me an essential pathway for developing consciousness, widening perception, and expanding personal evolution.
     Drawing on my transformational experiences of recovery from an injury to the spine, my art is essentially from the spirit and from the body, of the body. My inspiration is in the value and the aesthetic sense of biological organismic movements everywhere in nature which are reflected in the intrinsic worlds of the movement of the body as well. Movements which curve, spiral, undulate carry the implications of an emerging awareness of connection, spirituality and freedom.