![](https://img.artlogic.net/w_472,h_472,c_limit/exhibit-e/58efd9e202a937af1e2b12c5/db7867f865332dff85961a1ef27c789b.jpeg)
Jewels of the Sea I - WPB
Mixed Media on Canvas
60h x 48w in.
The forms in my work evoke botanical or geological elements, but these elements serve merely as a point of departure for the viewer to experience what is ultimately a visual record of an improvisational dialogue between a blank canvas and myself.
Disturbing a perfect, intact space—effectively creating conflict, and subsequently a need for resolution—I cycle through the opposing forces of chaos and order, alternating random actions of painting with controlled, deliberate mark-making. Repeating the processes of construction and destruction, an internal structure emerges and becomes an energetic framework of form and ground. Organic shapes positioned against pale or dark grounds that initially appear to be expanses of negative space, but these textured expanses are elevated layers of paint that reveal the history of the piece. It is neither form nor ground that I address in my work, rather the tensions and dynamism between the two.
The specific simplicities and complexities of the painting—the dispersion of light and dark pigments, covert and overt marks, delicate lines and bold shapes—comprise a visual language that characterizes the painting’s unique nuanced energetic expression.
I could say that I intimate a certain relationship between physical and spiritual space in my work, because in a sense that is true. Yet my approach to making a painting is not cerebral—it is intuitive and energetically fluid. My mind and body serve as a vehicle for transmuting universal creative energy into three-dimensional objects. Ultimately, I am most interested in extracting singular experiences—snapshots—from life’s infinite cycles of growth and decay, and in transforming the public, universal worlds of nature and human existence into sites of private knowledge."