TREES

MOVING IN THE WIND

WERE

ONCE

protons

or

imagination   

(Michael McClure)

My paintings are an abstract navigation through a partly imagined terrain. 

I have always experienced a deep connection to the feeling of a place. I sense molecules ricocheting around in the air. Other things I sense about a place:

the weight of the air, heavy or light, and its smell

the language of botanical shapes

the character of tree shapes and movement

the mystery of shadow shapes

the thrill of a found object, for example an elegantly shaped, rusted wire

the secret messages of calligraphy found in bark and water ripples,

the distinct and fleeting nature of animals   

I seek exciting visual moments in quiet, calm settings, like sun blasting through oddly shaped peepholes in a shady stand of cactus, for example. My subject matter is water, ponds, puddles, weeds and woodland debris – the microcosm of shapes nearby and underfoot.

As a photographer and a painter, I am always in search of magic in the farmlands, coastal countryside, and out of the airplane windows over Northern California. Examining my photographs to understand how shapes and light impart abstraction and incite reverence, I ask,  what does the mystery look like and how did it get to be like this?  That mystery is revealed in shapes I see and in shapes I imagine.

I paint quickly; the experience is abstract and spontaneous. Color, density, transparency, textures and marks become the subject. I freely layer acrylic, gouache, oil stick, oil paints, ink, pencil and collaged printed papers that I make. The mostly abstract marks concede their origins in nature, while scrambling the brains inclination to identify.  Increasingly I seek ways to include fragments of photographs so subtly blended that the viewer cannot see them but feels a stronger sense of resonance, as in deja vu.

Michael McClure had it right – this is all a temporary, passing moment. Trees moving in the wind were once protons, or imagined, and they will be protons again. On a good day this rumination brings a sense of our transforming, beautiful and horrific present world powerfully alive in my painting studio. 

I live and work in Winters and Sausalito in Northern California.  I received a Bachelor of Studio Arts with an emphasis in painting and printmaking at UCDavis, studying with Wayne Thiebaud and Roland Peterson. I returned full time to painting in 2017.   Recently I have studied with Fran O’Niell (New York Studio School), and Enrique Martinez Celaya.