Artist Statement 

In my art I often use line and shape to illustrate inner worlds. My stream of conscious work is perhaps the strongest. In these pieces I challenge myself to explore different lines and patterns in a novel way with my pen. In the body of work that I made for the MAT program, I only created one such drawing. Although I really enjoy it, I won't be sharing it. The piece is busy, exploding with energy, and my eye dives into different areas finding graphic representations of thoughts and feelings I was processing as it evolved. Perhaps it is too personal to share?

This summer I have the intention of making a series of landscape paintings and a series of abstract paintings. I originally thought I would be sharing some initial studies of future landscape paintings. I did some work in this area and created a line drawing of a wild section of my lawn, where the moss and the lily of the valley grow. I enjoy it because it begins to approach the complexity of my stream of consciousness work, but the composition and the coloring I later did with colored pencil took something away from this piece. As part of this course of study I also took landscape photos, made another landscape drawing, two completed line drawings, a number of abstract colored pencil pieces, and finally some abstract paintings.

The work that I am sharing is simple. They are color studies for the abstract paintings I hope to make this summer. They are inspired by a piece I made 20 years ago on the floor of the barn at the Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, VT, which now is displayed on the wall of my first house. I still enjoy looking at this piece because of the simple yet dynamic color and the mysterious way the shapes float on the black background.

The two studies float on the white background of my sketchbook. The limited color palette and the straight forward graphic approach hopefully creates a calm and sublime design to contemplate without being too challenging. I hope that the viewer is both put at ease by their simplicity, but also left with questions that make looking at art intriguing.

July 2022