Artists Statement/Bio

When I start a painting, I feel as though I am creating a new world. It develops into a real, visionary place, evoking space using abstract references to real world constructs. Each place/space has its own emotional tone, created through the color palette and mark-making vocabulary. I float shapes through, around, and on top of my calligraphic marks, creating a dynamic rhythm and flow through the painting. As I make each painting, my eyes wander through the composition, following first one path, then another. The viewer can take the same, or a similar journey. My work is a land of complex possibilities.

I would like the owner/viewer of each painting to be able to see it slightly differently each day. My work is very sensitive to being under various lighting, and it is one thing at dawn, another thing in the afternoon, and third thing in the evening. Each day, and each time of day, has it’s own color tint, and the painting changes in response to those changes. Or perhaps each day, the viewer sees the painting in one mood, or another. Again, a different vista seems to appear. My pieces are for wandering, contemplation, and imagination.

My work varies with what I see during my day. When I went back to painting on canvas in 2005 (after having worked on small gouaches and collages for over 20 years), at first my paintings echoed the collages. Then I started to break away from those, and start constructing the pieces with abstract components/images of what I saw during my day. At one point I had a job building virtual worlds, and when you look at the work from that era (2007-2008), you can see the carryover between what I created during the day, and what I painted on “my time”. When I went back to painting full-time (2011) my work reflected the world I experienced out my window, or walking to my tiny studio on the near-north side of Chicago: alleyways, three-flats, cracked sidewalks. For a year I had a studio on the 10th floor with window-walls, overlooking the Chicago loop from the south, bordered on the east by the ever-changing colors of Lake Michigan. Since 2012, I have lived east of Chicago (Michigan City), with a creek, a pond, and 2 acres of wild meadow. Again, my work reflects what I see during my day. I do not paint from nature, but I paint with each day’s images, a visual language, lodged (somehow) in my brain.

I invite viewers to spend time with each painting, to enjoy the dialogue and where the journey takes them.