ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Trained as a painter, in recent years most of my finished works have been works on paper, either watercolor with colored pencil paintings or prints, particulary color monotypes. Both my paintings and prints today tend toward the abstract; they are not designed as representational windows into space, yet through woven textures of color and form they nonetheless are meant to evoke symbolic or associative emotions in the viewer. Color has always been important to me as a means of expression, and I often develop my paintings and prints with this in mind: layering transparent colors to achieve striking illusionistic effects.
The creative process for me is one of exploration and discovery. My finished works result from a process in which the initial image-making is tentative and exploratory, a technique that lends itself to imaginative fantasy. I experiment with unusual techniques and materials to get illusionistic effects which, I hope, will resonate with the viewer. This spontaneous process has allowed me to develop a visual language rooted in a universal, shared unconscious. In the print medium especially I find that my initial intentions are often unrealized: chance and the inevitable transmutations inherent in the printing process play a significant and often redeeming role.
Traditional painting concerns itself primarily with the interplay of light and shadow on surfaces: the skins of fruits, people, the Earth itself. Even abstraction, which breaks with that tradition, has been largely confined to its own skin: the surface of the paper or canvas. Through unusual spatial juxtapositions, I try to portray not only what can be seen at the surface, but what lies beneath: the hidden and obscure, the dimly perceived, the unconscious and the mysterious.
