I am thrilled that everyone who comes to my exhibits, my website or buys a book. Please know you are getting my best view of the world.
Art is a secret language the women in my family shared. At seven, I saw Salvador Dali’s “Santiago El Grande” and thought I want to do this. To convey a story both political, spiritual and familial. I felt lifted by the power of the horse and man and scared that would crush the boy below. The visual paradox allowed me to hold more than one thought and feeling at a time.
I take thousands pictures for reference of things that catch my eye, like a visual riff, as the sound of a train might be to a jazz musician. Yet my struggle in front of the easel is to get my mind and its preconceived stories out of the way. The ritual of preparing a ground, then laying out my palette’’s rainbow of colors is my entry point to meditation on light, shape, color, pattern, and form. This process lets the work tell me what it is I’m thinking and feeling when I see these riffs-revealing the secret of what I know to be true, which leads me in new directions of exploration within this visual ballad.
While at the easel time becomes infinite for me, eighteen hour days become normal. However when diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer in 2012-13 with a dire prognosis time shortened creating another paradox and the question of what is important, what to leave behind? For me that came down to love, honesty, and beauty.
Returning to the studio, the language of my paintings changed. Though I was drawn to the peaceful birds in my yard, the daily headlines of presidential campaign slogans, shootings and racial tensions came through the art. When exhibiting I added written stories to the work not to explain, but to encourage people to ponder their own beliefs while under the cold watchful eye of the birds.
It is my intention to continue to explore the language of art and words intermingling and share the visions and voice I’ve been given through my time in the studio. I create series of paintings that explore my current passions, which can be birds, flowers, fish or reflections yet the secrets they share with me are about feelings, politics, racism, healthcare and spirituality the stuff of life itself that will be what I leave behind.