Statement
Only recently, have I found a way to freely nurture the artist in me. None of my other creative ventures have given me such joy of expression as painting. I cried the first time I hung one of my paintings on the wall. I had released so many suppressed emotions into that painting. The colors were vibrant, the strokes were wild and the three dancers were unrecognizable but moving. I had wanted to paint for years. The exploration of colors, shapes, and textures was fun and is still.
I tend to look beyond what’s in front of me and take note. It might be the colors, reflections, shapes, textures or something that simply strikes me as funny. Maybe I’m stuck in traffic and just happen to have the fortune of being at the right angle to snap a picture of the orangey sunset reflected in each window of a building or see Batman’s mask at the top of the Symphony Building. I’m drawn to the organic and whimsy around me daily and that is how I paint.
For the past 25 years, my canvas was a client’s property. You’d think as a landscape designer, I would paint gardens scenes, vases or flowers, but instead I’m drawn to the colors, the textures and the unrefined shapes when I zooms in beyond the exterior to the center. I want my paintings to be at just the right position to show of being unrefined, unprocessed, cohesive with nature. Many of my paintings are organic abstract studies of flowers and materials. I strive to find just the right juxtaposition at the center of a flower to show just how organic it really is. It’s unprocessed and raw. It’s that freely growing shape with color, expressive shapes and textures that allows it to feed itself and produce the petals. I want it to feed the soul of each viewer in some way, so they see something besides the pretty flower.
William Van Doren is a major influence for my love of landscapes particularly those of mountains. I’ve spent so much of my life looking out to the mountains in Virginia. About 2014, I came upon one of his paintings. I at all these colorful circles and finally saw the mountain landscape behind them. It was subtle. I was slow to see what was beyond. I love his choice of colors for his landscapes and his expressive circle studies, so I study. I explore. I try to bring to life my landscapes. The colors and additions make my landscapes a bit surreal with a touch of whimsy.
Each painting is a freeing exploration in acrylics and mixed media and I strive for art lovers to look beyond the painting in front of them that feeds my soul and hopefully feeds theirs too a little.
