Hello, and thanks for taking the time to read my About page. Below is my artist statement, but the essence of my work is to make paintings that underscore the concept of a lush sensuality and an unsettling, overwhelming beauty. If you’ve been to my website (links on right), then you’ll have noticed that I’ve broken out of the rectangular picture plane to make complex cut surfaces that are extravagant, untamed, and growing out of control.
The cut-edge paintings are large, usually 10-11 feet wide and they take me many months to create. I start by designing the edges on the computer (this can take up to three months) and then I have the panels laser cut. Once the panels arrive at my studio, I start drawing out the composition directly onto the panel’s surface — allowing it to change and grow as I paint. My newest project is nine panels and is approximately 38-feet wide. I hope to have it finished before the summer.
Through my work, I attempt to show nature at odds with itself by playing with the contradictions of emptiness versus fullness, lush versus barren, and rapture versus displeasure. In my paintings, the berries, linear loops, and tiny dots represent an abundance of embryos, eggs, and seeds. Heaps are an important element: these berries, loops, tiny dots, and sometimes creatures accumulate in piles and mounds and represent the bounty of femininity and ripeness.
My compositions are inspired by the Baroque, Romanticism, and Victorian decorative art, as well as botanical imagery, to create a visual feast of fruit, flora, wildlife, and pattern. I take those elements out of their context and give them a surreal landscape or contemporary stage. When placed together, the forms and patterns represent a kind of human life cycle, with all of its changes and complexities. Themes of excess and beauty are also represented through the decorative qualities in the paintings. Yet, these ornamental, invasive patterns creep into the fecund environments of the birds and bats — sometimes overtaking, even strangling the animals — and along with the ominous berry, create a picture of sensuality mixed with undertones of wanting and dismay.
My new work includes digitally designed, intricately cut-edge surfaces. The various edges, which may include animals, insects, and flourishes, are an extension of the patterns within the paintings. These cut forms, along with the shadows made by the cuts, encourage a three-dimensionality to the work, and by doing so, the patterns become more invasive and experiential.
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