Artist’s Statement​      

 

Art is my way of confronting myself. Someone famous once said that she writes to find out what she’s thinking. I paint to do that. Art has the power to make one see things in a new light. It allows us to recover memories and to rework and heal from past trauma. It is also, frequently, prescient, in that the artist is granted the gift of picturing, somehow, a future not yet known.

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My newest series, Witnesses and Ghosts, began with a dead bird. I encountered it during a morning walk, took a photo, and came home and painted it. This came on the heels of the 2016 election, after which I was emotionally devastated. In the days that followed I encountered several more dead birds. These became the inception of this latest series. Since then we’ve learned that at least one third of the indigenous birds of North America are no more. I did not know this then. For me, the dead birds were simply emblematic of what was happening culturally and politically in our country. Who could have guessed these images would have a literal application?

 

I continue to draw inspiration from the natural world, philosophy, science, literature, dreams and family history. When I am “in the zone” I am able to use art to transcend to a higher dimension of consciousness. Making art is the greatest privilege I can imagine as a human on the planet. I am constantly grateful I am able to partake and contribute.