Statement

The focus of my studio practice is no different from the practice of living— a steady undoing, a constant letting go. It turns in cycles through stages of nothingness, growth, beauty, death— like the flowers in the garden.

In the studio, I sit with the discomfort of not knowing. Uncertainty is very unsettling. Though if I step aside, if I loosen my grip, curiosity takes the lead, and something unexpected begins to breathe.

Abstraction is a strange one. Nothing is known. Hence a certain uncomfortability exists. Lots of falling down in the moment. The only way to make a painting is through it. Paint is layered, stripped, and buried again. A razor blade, belt sander, Dremel—tools of erasure. Raw pigment, binder, silt; spread with worn brushes, a putty knife, or simply poured. Colors chosen by intuition, not reason, sometimes I even paint in the dark.

Throughout my career I've incorporated organic images in my work, usually abstracted, often as they are transforming. Recently I've been simultaneously creating a more pronounced body of work entitled Bloom. It is a celebration of beauty and joy. Imagery is borrowed from painting to painting, just like the garden cycle. After a flower blooms, it drops seeds, and thus new flowers sprout.

Regardless of the body of work, process is painting as verb. Improvisation is constant. And then, almost without warning, a painting arrives— a noun, a presence.

The cycle continues: curiosity, procrastination, patience, attachment, chaos, arrival. Again and again, I practice the art of undoing. Preciousness is surrendered.

And though everything is impermanent, there is a moment and perhaps even a declaration— the painting exists.