Artist Statement
Art has always been a part of my life. My earliest exposure to art was my great- grandmother who worked with charcoal making squiggly lined landscapes. We would sit side-by-side creating art together and from her came only words of encouragement. I remember being especially drawn to her colored charcoal drawings, multitudes of tiny colorful marks that created a scene.
Although our styles could not be more different, color has stayed with me. Though I have worked with both oil and acrylic paint, oil is my choice of medium. The lushness that comes from oil is irreplaceable. I prefer to paint straight from the tube using a palette knife as an extension of my hand, letting each color determine what happens next. Each color has a different viscosity and when placed on top of another reacts differently depending on the amount of pressure applied with the palette knife. Within each painting something new is discovered and inspiration is found.
My latest series expounds on my multiple layered paintings by scraping through and manipulating the wet paint to form a mirage of tiny paintings within the canvas. With a massive amount of leftover paint from the scraping, I will begin a new painting by building texture from the latter…reduce, reuse, recycle. Typically, I will have at least five to ten paintings working at a time on various shapes and sizes of canvas. Each painting inspires the next.
The ladder series coincides with the scratch series. It deals with the loss of someone who has impacted my life. The technique is the same using multiple layers of paint and color as a metaphor. The ladder is the last image to appear.
The thicker the paint, the better, this is what my white paintings are about. I begin by applying color after color and then use white on top to “erase” and build more texture. I will repeat this process until I am pleased with the end result.
I hope it is apparent to the viewer that I am passionate and have fun at what I do.
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