I I I

a r t i s t ' s   s t a t e m e n t


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WHY I DO WHAT I DO

For as long as I can remember, people - their stories, their relationships, their secrets and their joys - have fascinated me. Each tale so different from the other, each voice unique, the perspective of any given person unfolds with revelations enough to astound any philosopher seeking to make sense of human experience. From an early age, as with many children, visual expression became as natural as breathing and hours were spent drawing wherever and whenever I could. The subjects of these early drawings were most often people - portraits or narratives which revolved around the lives of girls, adventure stories which led my heroines through struggles with nature, into the depths of wild jungles, over deserts, across seas. The narrative element still plays a key role in much of my work although the stories told have shifted from "girl against nature" to psychological explorations of the female perspective with a particular focus on female sexuality. These narratives, usually ambiguous and sometimes metaphorical, are more about a moment extracted from the whole than a clear tale wherein beginnings and endings are obvious. They are more about questions than they are about answers. In The Prom Queen, for example (depicted above) we see a young woman in her prom gown seated against a rural backdrop. In one hand, she carelessly holds a crown while in the other she holds her chin in a posture that suggests impermeable solitude and possible disillusionment. She has won the crown, apparently, but a bubble has burst, and she ponders reality. What questions that reality poses is for the viewer to surmise and the stories conjectured often tell more about the viewer than the painting itself. Metaphorically, this work is about disenchantment, a moment common to human experience when dreams realized do not necessarily reward as anticipated.

THE APPROACH

For years I have kept notebooks or files of "ideas" comprised mostly of notations and very occasionally, thumbnail sketches, these which sometimes lead to the development of new work. I do not preplan a work with sketches, etc. but choose to follow the process of painting from start to finish on the canvas itself. A vague idea formulates, most often beginning with a singular figure or pairing of figures, around which the rest of the composition is constructed. Composition is a integral element in my work, an arrangement of forms which stretches to the very edge of the canvas, guiding the eye about the surface of the painting, establishing points of calm and tension and emphasizing the significant. Often, although not always, I have begun with an under-painting, developing the whole of the work monochromatically before colour is introduced in a series of stages. I generally employ a dry brush technique which results in a diffuse, fresco-like surface. The colours build intuitively from a palette that is somehow inherent, a process which culminates in the creation of mood and the accentuation of tension. I am drawn toward the subtleties of colour, whites on whites or variations of a singular colour, a practice which may seem to follow the principle that "less is more," but which, in fact, follows no prescribed maxim. Each artist's palette is as personal as a fingerprint and is in part what renders each of our visions unique.