Artist Statement
My paintings continue to explore the relationship between representation and abstraction. Subjects are selected from my SF Bay Area environment - rich in both rural and urban imagery - to serve as a starting point for my compositions. My perspective for this work is from a high distant vantage point emphasizing the flatness and patterns of the image. For the urban images, one result is a view of buildings seemingly adjacent but actually distant from each other - an alternate reality that places structures of different eras in the same picture plane. The landscape fields become stacked patterns of diagonals with the suggestion of trees. Enough detail is supplied to represent the scale and character of the subject, but my main concern is the act of painting. As with my earlier abstracts, evidence remains of initial sketches, gestural mark-making, false starts, masking and layering. Further abstraction is achieved through atmospheric perspective and the degree of development in different sections of the painting. This approach is exaggerated more so in the "Linear Spaces" work, with greater simplification of forms and patterns, as well as an expanded exploration of line as an expressive mark.
Composition, color and linearity are all affected by an overall intent: to create a process that inspires spontaneity. Finding different patterns within the layout, new ways of making lines, and different color combinations result in a unique feeling for each piece. Ideally, the process gives the painting a degree of free will - the ability to fully become itself. In addition to creating an object of beauty and pleasure, the intent is to surprise myself with the results and to pass that sense of discovery on to the viewer.
Composition, color and linearity are all affected by an overall intent: to create a process that inspires spontaneity. Finding different patterns within the layout, new ways of making lines, and different color combinations result in a unique feeling for each piece. Ideally, the process gives the painting a degree of free will - the ability to fully become itself. In addition to creating an object of beauty and pleasure, the intent is to surprise myself with the results and to pass that sense of discovery on to the viewer.