My Artists Statement

Artist’s Statement for War and Peace and The Height in Between

My involvement is with the tactile, sensuous aspects of materials that are often nontraditional. The source of my inspiration is a reaction that occurs when compounds are mixed; or the changes that take place over time. The work becomes akin to a relic that bears the imprint of time. Each piece is a documentation of my surrender to its daemon or spirit. As I add layer upon layer, building a textural surface, I am simultaneously unearthing an abstraction of my autobiography: the work is an external metaphor for an internal process; it attests to my own emotional, spiritual and intellectual journey.

Nontraditional mediums incorporated into this body of work are soil and dried plants from American Civil War areas. However, inspired by Timothy Houghton’s poem, A War Far and Near, the war I evoke is not literal but an internal battle that is part of the process of self-actualization.

Occasionally in reaction to the complexity of my usual process, using ink or paint, trans-like and dance-like I allow the medium to flow across paper or canvas. In some of these works the distinction between these divergent approaches has been blurred.