Artist Statement

Folkloric parables leverage dystopia with humor in my surreal landscape paintings. I chase and unearth the imagery through chaotic modifications rather than by following a plan. The constant changes, driven by color and structural considerations, slowly reveal Jungian motifs in a comic, macabre Bosch-like world.

Female characters in my paintings come from many sources. They are morphed and misshapen. Many are based on a bulbous Jean Miro line drawing of a female form I found years ago. Others are inspired by Cycladic fertility goddesses, Olive Oyl, cows with udders, or horses.

As a child my mother read me ghoulish Hans Christian Anderson and Grimms Fairy tales with beautiful, strange illustrations that fascinated me. Later I read Maurice Sendak, sharing his haunting drawings with my children.

My females are protectors, survivors, on a hero’s epic journey, showing resilience in the face of upheaval. As a visual artist I use my platform to offer a truth. I want to emote visceral feelings of loss, struggle, hope, or trauma that coexists with humor and absurdity. I carve out a credible space. The dismal state of our planet’s ecosystem is reflected with elements of fire, flood and darkening skies.

After years of painting the landscape perceptually, now I start a painting with a trope, or formula of a landscape, like a snakey road going back into space, which I then populate. The passages have bumpy Baroque rhythms with many iconic things to see along the way. I don’t want the viewer to look at the painting, rather I want to viewer to be part of it, implicated in the damage we all do by simply existing on this planet, leaving our carbon footprint, our consumptions, our personal flaws and ambitions. What does it mean to be human today as the environment is rising up in biblical forces? Where are we going? Where have we been?

Every day, I walk, wherever I am located, and respond to the land with all my senses and careful attention. I may start a small painting from something I saw, a clue, then work quickly, but it continues for years, with patience and empathy, from that little seed of an idea. It’s a form of societal storytelling through sensations, then developing the story into a complex, lasting composition.