statement

"As my life goes on I do not see the prettiness of life as false but as an indication of true desires for harmony and beauty as our experience"

"I stop the work when I feel a kind of excitement that this is right. This says something true or that can only be said this way."

Artist Statement

"Remembering is important. I work to memorialize love and goodness while including the darkness that is part of the light. I choose images that have a particular pull to me in the world they suggest. I like to start with representational images from photographs. By working on the images I hope to create work that will live on. I have painted and created installations from old photo albums of display pictures from a department store in Kansas in the 1940’s. The windows were created by my mother. Like my sisters and brothers we grew up in a world of paint. I remember the beauty and wonder of this but also remember the sadness, anger and power struggles that were behind the scenes.

The way you paint is important but why and what you paint has been a bigger concern to me. As my life goes on I do not see the prettiness of life as false but as an indication of true desires for harmony and beauty as our experience. It has been hard for me to find the work to really develop. I see that I love photographs and I love to paint. As I look back at my work I see this is a continual thread in all my work. Robert Rauchenberg’s work continues to inspire and resonate with me.

The installation work has involved larger paintings and derives from the admiration of the total experience of public worship and celebration. The catholic mass and religious processions and events of all types have a power that seems to me the place for artists to put energy. Installations that I have created for art events support those events, such as the large fortunes for the Cultural Arts Council or the Shopping Window for New Criteria in Singapore. Sometimes they engage and seem supportable by a larger audience and other times it misses the deeper vein of truth. As art work I feel the installation work needs to be commissioned and should be collaboration between all the participants. In my education and in the community of Sonoma County I have been influenced by Christo’s remarkable work.

In working I have a process gathering images, writing words of association and drawing. I work with all paints, watercolors, guache, acrylics , oil and encaustic. Each has it’s advantages. The paintings of the lanterns were inspired by the historical artistic interest in the light from paper lanterns. In the paintings of “inner gates” I worked with the device of doorways having just returned from Singapore and feeling the entering and leaving and returning to cultures. The large sculptures and papier-mâché work are partly and homage to the craft work of my Mother and also an expression of the power of gender.

In my recent work I use the tool of the computer to quickly crop, zoom in and out and change the colors in an instant. I create digital images from the photographs or from my drawings and I print them or have them printed and then spend time under painting and then layering the paint. I work on a flat surface mostly. I like to hang up the work to look at it closely. There is a dialogue that develops between what I put down on the image and another part of myself. It is almost like an inner conversation. I stop the work when I feel a kind of excitement that this is right. This says something true or that can only be said this way. Words are inadequate."