Ancient Romans regarded the hour before dawn and after sunset as holy hours separate from the rest of the day;
we still connect with that feeling. Most people will enjoy a beautiful sunset, and those that rise early enough, a beautiful dawn.
My work is about sky. Most people enjoy a beautiful sunset and those that rise early enough, a beautiful dawn.
Clouds are much maligned bringers of unpleasant weather, but rain is a necessary part of the ecosystem and the clouds
that bring them can be a beautiful composition of art. In fact, the sky is where we live – we just live there
at ground level. It is the most important part of our world, the most changing, the instigator of most
physical changes. And the weather is always in the news coverage. My capture of the skies and abstractions
thereof aim to help us realize how small we are in the face of the sky, and yet how it unites us all.
I work in many different mediums to depict it: watercolor, acrylic, murals, oil, refractured watercolor,
watercolor collage, refractured acrylic, wet in wet acrylic, refractured oil, and mixtures of the above. Each offers
different possibilities and have different strengths and restrictions.
I also love working on different surfaces such as wood, metal, drywall or fiberglass, and on
differently shaped surfaces, and can see 'canvases' in many places.
I call my signature method “refracturing”. I stole the term from quilters, but had it recognized by the
international collage magazine “Kolaj” in 2016 as the word for this method. It involves painting each scene
one or more times, then cutting and reassembling. I like to juxtapose pieces that have a partially matched
edge which gives an interesting mix of flow and clash. Stylistically the method has been described as
“somewhere between third generation orphism (an offshoot of cubism) and unclassifiable” – which is a great
place to be unless you’re trying to explain it to a gallerist over the phone. When we look at something,
we don’t look at it in its entirety all at once, but focus on this bit, that bit, this bit over here…. so,
my method presents the views in the way that the observer's brain would process them.
Painting was a frequent joy as a child and I dreamed of becoming a skyscapist.
When I was young (pre-school, maybe through about 3rd grade) I painted huge skies with tiny mountains.
One early photograph is of me at my little easel at about age 4. The painting that I had completed was a sky.
Looking back, much of my early artwork was constructed with the emphasis on the sky.
Later, my soul was fractured open and poetry fell out and allowed me to fill the silence with words.
In middle age, I had an epiphany: It was time to paint again, and I soon rediscovered the freedom of the clouds.
But the poetry built up inside me as the sky continued to inspire, so now I write poetry for the paintings
and incorporate it into my art.
Living in Imperial County means I am daily inspired by the skies of Colorado Desert.
Here are a couple videos about my work:
Interview at Maturango Museum
Creating a mixed media painting
Article about me in the Borrego Sun
Talking about my work on the SoulRise exhibit
Passcode: a!722S+j
Yucaipa Valley Art Association Zoom Demo
Interview for Ontario Arts