STATEMENT

Formally, my art practice has always rested in line, a preference that has its roots in childhood ballet classes and its persistence in a desire for visual movement, whether representational or nonrepresentational. I have always worked on paper. Initially, this was linked to my preference for drawing over painting, for the immediacy and simplicity of drawn marks. The lightness of paper, the ease with which it can be torn or cut, its variability are all qualities that inform my work.

For the last several years, a main thrust of my work has been reconciling elements that don’t initially seem to “go together”: images torn into pieces; old work combined with new; bold passages against more subtle areas. This grows directly out of how I see life in general, as a collection of actions, moments, reactions that are often random and anything but seamless in their interactions. As the state of public affairs has become intensely painful, I’ve turned toward works that help me hold on to hope for positive change. Typically, most of this is expressed through imagery of flowers and gardens—symbols of renewal and resilience.

Much of my work combines media, such as trace monoprinting and relief prints. The simplicity of the monoprinting process lends itself to spontaneity, motion, and frequently to surprising results. While relief prints are made from a fixed plate or object, I’ve found ways of allowing them, too, to be less uniform—more varied–than the classical ideal. Thus, I work with processes that engender movement not only spatially (how the marks look) but also temporally (What will happen next? How will I react to unintended marks/accidents? Can I make an integrated whole from images that are displaced in time?)