Artist's Statement

Some of my paintings take their inspiration from the places my husband and I have visited throughout the world, though I often abstract my impressions to convey the underlying feeling of the locale: the awe-inspiring expanse of the barren plains of Patagonia, the visual excitement of the red sand dunes of southwest Africa, the joyous celebration of a colorful Christmas market in Germany.  Much of my work, however, is more purely abstract, using unrealistic colors and exaggerated perspectives to convey a uniquely personal vision.  Although largely intuitive, my work is consistently grounded in my life experiences.

After years of watercolor painting in a largely realistic style, I changed my direction to painting abstracts and semi-abstracts in acrylics.  With this change, I felt a new freedom to paint from within to better express myself.  When I begin work on new painting, I often don’t know what the subject will be, if it has a subject at all.  This only reveals itself to me through the process of painting itself.  I often start with gestural mark-making, recognizing that many of these marks will later be covered over by additional layers of paint as the final composition is gradually revealed.  Working with a limited palette, I seek through my interactions with the painting, my responses to the texture and visible layers of paint as I shape the composition, to release the work’s potential expressive force.  The rest belongs to the viewer, who must reach her own conclusions and cultivate her own emotional reactions to the finished painting.