Artist Statement

In my work I connect dichotomies. I consider certainty and uncertainty, clarity and obscurity, unity and individuality, and permanence and ephemerality. To render these thoughts I pair abstraction with representation, text with imagery, color with whiteness of paper, and austerity with indulgence.

Through painting I examine relationships within the detailed world of human experience. Particular thoughts, objects, experiences, and memories, become in my mind, moments of beauty when understood on a phenomenological level. Replanting elements from the natural world in an abstract way allows new correlations to become recognizable.

My paintings intuitively originate with fields of abstract color. I use marks, patterns, pin holes, words, and imagery to visually sew information together. Flora, birds, fish, tree limbs, houses, clouds, and landscapes are some recurring elements in my work. Flora represents beauty and brevity of all physical life. Sky imagery to me, is a metaphor for the omnipresence of God. The landscape shows the multifariousness found in creation.

Five years ago I began the pinhole technique as I was researching Australian Aboriginal art. I translated their use of painted dots by piercing tiny needle sized holes through paper to create pattern, text, and image. To me, this slow, repetitive process reflects constancy and yet the fleeting nature of time. Combining the pinhole’s specificity with symbiotic ways of painting, I feel I can discover and reveal meaning.