Statement

The focus of my painting 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 flowers in the garden.

Along the way it's a bit of a contraction, experiencing a creative path of plurality while letting go what is to become singular. Walt Whitman's "I am large, I contain multitudes" reminds me who I am and how I've always navigated and created art. I am a hyphenated artist working in many mediums over the past 40+ years as photographer, painter, writer, dancemaker, performer, and musician.

Many of those mediums still inform me, though are left behind now for a painting studio practice.

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

I explore unfettered boundaries and the permission to wander in and out of abstraction, form, color as well as organic representation and beauty. Some paintings are instant; others might evolve over years. I resist dating the work because on a quantum level time is not absolute. Maybe all moments in time exist simultaneously.

Abstraction is a strange one. Nothing is known in the beginning. 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. Sometimes colors are chosen by intuition, not reason; I'll even paint in the dark.

I let discovery go where it's going to go. Making the same painting over and over bores me.

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.