Cross Section Series

What is timeless and enigmatic, this is the visual and psychological territory I traverse as an artist. My hybrid way of thinking plays a major role in how my works of abstraction develop in tandem with my love of working intuitively. 

While working my way through the mark making, shapes, surfaces, and color relationships that emerge, I seek out visual relationships within each composition that express what I don’t have words for. Visual poetry is what I strive for. Finding words to describe what I’m up to is very difficult and it is real work seeking titles. Settling on one that works seldom happens quickly. 

As in past bodies of work I rely on a visual vocabulary of abstraction, pattern, texture, and color. Especially with color, I often enjoy creating a palette that employs nuance. In this series I have added the compositional element of narrow edges used as outlines as a way to render each as a cross section or a slice of my visual thinking process. The shapes and spaces I work with are my way into an active form of meditation that takes place while drawing and painting. 

I usually work on numerous drawings and paintings simultaneously. My choice to rely on titles that usually refer to geographical and geological terminology derives from how handily they can reference psychologically internal landscapes as well as my deep love of the natural world. 

Signpost Series

Spring 2017 I attended the Lake Residency offered through the Morris Graves Foundation and resided in the late Morris Graves’ studio in a remote setting in northern California. In my case it was a return to the Pacific Northwest, the terrain in which my love of the natural world began. While immersed in a beautiful natural setting I revisited my deep interest in what is timeless, what occurs in cycles that play out for eons, and what I see as the relationship between our internal landscapes and the natural world that is still intact.

Once back in my studio I felt more at home with my intuition taking the lead as compositions go through the push/pull of reaching completion. Oceanic time is of great interest to me; while in that state of mind I am free to visually explore my main concerns in the work. It is more about contemplation than movement and visual action.

In these drawings/paintings I often introduce collage elements that include images and pieces of older works which I have either torn or cut up. Past and present segments of my visual vocabulary augment the formations of clearly tactile surfaces. Reconfigured visual information coalesces, signaling what endures outside measured time.

Vessel Series

I am interested in the mysterious nature of what endures, both within an internal landscape and in the natural world.  Continually there are shifts, transformations, and subsequent restructurings taking place; some are obvious while others are subtle, sometimes barely visible.

In this series I am once again not interested in making sure everything throughout a drawing or painting follows a certain line of logic or set of rules.  During the past several years I've become increasingly fascinated by various shapes that can be considered vessels of one kind or another.  I am compelled by the many ways it is possible to contain, hold, or transport something of meaning or value.  The vessel as metaphor also connotes how vast, rich, and deep our interior lives are.  

My earlier hybrid form of picture making still appears in the work.  Overall, abstraction continues
to be my way into a visual vocabulary that has no need to define and pin down what remains mysterious.