For as long as I can remember, I have felt a deep and abiding connection with the path of the artist. (This despite the fact that I could not draw a realistic image to save my life.) My childhood heroes were explorers and pioneers, poets and writers, and especially, the nineteenth-century Parisian Impressionists. These innovators rejected officially sanctioned ways, left familiar places, and journeyed into uncharted territory—whether that territory was physical or metaphysical. Growing up in the sixties, I struggled to find a way to express a deeply felt creative and spiritual longing.
After immersing myself in the philosophies that fueled the Impressionist and Abstract Expressionist movements, I felt inspired to finally take the plunge into art-making. In my early thirties I began a series of soul portraits. Working from live models, I was never interested in realistically reproducing form as much as blending the creamy soft pastel to depict the essence of the unseen.
In the heart series I use oil pastel to experiment with texture, playing within the fertile limits of a simple form—layering color and scratching through conveys movement and reveals a distinct personality within each variation.
Two galleries of abstract paintings embrace the sense of spontaneity and freedom found in exploring the boundless mystery within the absence of form.
The collage series emerges from on-going ritual that turns art-making into a journey of personal transformation as unrelated images are deconstructed and seamlessly integrated using water-soluble oil pastel.
Throughout the art-making process, I rely on an innate intuitive ability that sees directly into the heart of things while employing various media and techniques to explore elements that interest me most: texture, movement, depth of feeling, consciousness, and above all—color.
Today, my art flows as much from my passion for exploring the fascinating contradictions within the human psyche and soul as it does from the thrill of engaging the complexities of the creative process. Whether putting down paint or scratching it off, whether patiently waiting for another layer to dry, or painstakingly cutting out an image that will find it’s place within the whole, the journey from the blank canvas to a completed piece becomes an all-consuming interplay between exciting periods of flow and those inevitable periods of frustration when that effortless flow abates. When I have run out of room and don’t know what to do next . . . that’s when the process gets really interesting.
For further information contact me about artwork or my counseling and coaching services designed to support creators committed to engaging the challenges inherent to the creative process as a path for healing and growth. ORDER MY BOOK Wild Ideas: Creativity from the Inside Out!
