There are two things in particular that have influenced the direction of my work. One is the beautiful time-altered surfaces of 13th and 14th century Italian frescoes, particularly the frescoes of Giotto di Bondoni and Piero della Francesco. These paintings, made fragile by time, resonate from beneath their layers of patina with a palpable serenity. To me, they have become meditations. They are like an old lens really, through which one perceives, through dusky scratches a palimpsest of a purity of thought and intention.
The second influence has been the drawings of very young children that show us their search along the boundary line between pictograph and representation. These drawings are fresh and free. They do not adhere to preconceived conventions nor do they follow external expectations. They are sheer discoveries.
For me, artistic creation is a journey, it is the road that leads from thought, through search to discovery. The destination is not necessarily predetermined, for the journey itself is of primary significance. This concept is a philosophical one that I have been drawn to for a very long time. It is a central theme found in literature, film, music and visual arts. The journey motif defies time and the bounds of culture and I see an intrinsic power in it.
I have always been interested in how the process of painting – the activity itself – establishes content. I work and rework the paintings until form and content merge. Layered brushwork, the effects of paint removal, incised and inflected line, eventually establish spaces that resonate with color. The chaos of the earliest layers are harnessed and refined. It is in the evolution of a painting where the residue of earlier activity on the surface maintains
a presence that infuses and energizes subsequent layers of paint.
The evolving surface of my paintings creates a chronology of mark-making that elicits through the determinism of process an empathetic response. Like the palimpsest, the remnants of earlier marks imperfectly erased and gone over several times, records time and activity that has ceased and is now still.
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The second influence has been the drawings of very young children that show us their search along the boundary line between pictograph and representation. These drawings are fresh and free. They do not adhere to preconceived conventions nor do they follow external expectations. They are sheer discoveries.
For me, artistic creation is a journey, it is the road that leads from thought, through search to discovery. The destination is not necessarily predetermined, for the journey itself is of primary significance. This concept is a philosophical one that I have been drawn to for a very long time. It is a central theme found in literature, film, music and visual arts. The journey motif defies time and the bounds of culture and I see an intrinsic power in it.
I have always been interested in how the process of painting – the activity itself – establishes content. I work and rework the paintings until form and content merge. Layered brushwork, the effects of paint removal, incised and inflected line, eventually establish spaces that resonate with color. The chaos of the earliest layers are harnessed and refined. It is in the evolution of a painting where the residue of earlier activity on the surface maintains
a presence that infuses and energizes subsequent layers of paint.
The evolving surface of my paintings creates a chronology of mark-making that elicits through the determinism of process an empathetic response. Like the palimpsest, the remnants of earlier marks imperfectly erased and gone over several times, records time and activity that has ceased and is now still.
.
