embracing the abyss
Artist Statement
Suggestive of caves and other deep spaces in the earth, my paintings and monotypes are metaphors for inward exploration of the psyche. This work emerged from the arc of feelings that I have experienced in my personal travels in actual caves and in spiritual journeys from grief through joy. Seductive, mysterious, frightening, caves nourish both life and decay. Similarly, my artworks may produce primal feelings of shelter or threat, mirroring the depths of the soul. On closer inspection, they may suggest the typically overlooked patterns in the surfaces of stone, where imagined animal and human forms may flow into one-another.
I do not depict specific places from memory or photographs. Instead, my work begins abstractly. By pouring freely-flowing paint and using rapid knife-strokes to combine colors directly on the painting surface, or by using monotype printing techniques, I surrender some of my conscious control, allowing the paint to mimic the forces that create forms in nature. I then refine each piece to create coherent images containing illusionistic depth and subconscious imagery. The resulting artwork expresses the feelings evoked by imagined landscapes of the earth’s interior as filtered through the deepest self.
Suggestive of caves and other deep spaces in the earth, my paintings and monotypes are metaphors for inward exploration of the psyche. This work emerged from the arc of feelings that I have experienced in my personal travels in actual caves and in spiritual journeys from grief through joy. Seductive, mysterious, frightening, caves nourish both life and decay. Similarly, my artworks may produce primal feelings of shelter or threat, mirroring the depths of the soul. On closer inspection, they may suggest the typically overlooked patterns in the surfaces of stone, where imagined animal and human forms may flow into one-another.
I do not depict specific places from memory or photographs. Instead, my work begins abstractly. By pouring freely-flowing paint and using rapid knife-strokes to combine colors directly on the painting surface, or by using monotype printing techniques, I surrender some of my conscious control, allowing the paint to mimic the forces that create forms in nature. I then refine each piece to create coherent images containing illusionistic depth and subconscious imagery. The resulting artwork expresses the feelings evoked by imagined landscapes of the earth’s interior as filtered through the deepest self.