Statement
Abstraction is my favourite way of exploring an idea with paint and collage. The essence of an object or idea, the flicker of light or perspective in a landscape seems to me highlighted, when presented symbolically. Collage adds mystery, layers and fragmentation simulating the imperfection of vision, the fluid nature of memory and the richness of lived experience.
Themes in painting often result in series. Recent themes I have worked with include: board games (which I played endlessly as a child) and beach grass landscapes. The board game theme encompasses serious and playful elements, sacred and scientific, known and unknown, prescriptive and serendipitous.
The beach grass theme contrasts the ordinariness of beach grass with the cosmic energies of sky, sun, earth, wind and water which effect the very life of the humble grasses. Plays on perspective are present in the beach grass series: the beach grass at one’s feet superimposed on the expansiveness of a sky view or a distant ocean horizon.
References to pockets also occur in my work. Pockets are charming for holding small precious or endearing objects as well as the essential and functional detritus of our lives. There is a never ending fascination with what may be found; what memories or potential may be held in these mundane places.
Most recently, I have begun exploring a new motif; that of small birds converging in a fluid shape against an immense sky. I find it inexplicably amazing to watch how individual birds, in precise relation to each other, move with such random grace.
Each theme or motif that emerges within my work invites me to inner dialogue with my own belief systems, my own way of processing the personal and the universal. Perhaps, with each theme, I am actually exploring only a single idea - the small held within the immense.
