Artist’s Statement

The creative process is real magic, an unmeasured dimension of the human capacity for transformation. As a teacher and life coach, I awaken people to the creative potential in their lives, invigorating them with new perspectives and hopefulness. My work as a painter is the rich source of my belief in the creative potential within all of us. Picasso said that painting is a process of seizing power from nature; it is daring.

Painting is a complex practice, akin to alchemy, a dynamic communion of the numinous and the profane. The interaction of artist and materials may be a rhythmic and graceful dance, or a contentious wrestling match. Intellectually, the painter must alternately take and relinquish control. It’s never easy, and there is no allotted time for the process. But eventually a luminous moment strikes like lightning, the artist feels the pulse of harmony, and on the canvas everything is in place. Movement stops. The painting has ripened, like fruit, to its sweetest state. The artist develops the wisdom of knowing when to stop, like a composer knowing when and how to end a symphony. It cannot be taught, the body learns it from years of experience.

My paintings are a record of my interaction with the materials, my intellectual and spiritual process are sewn into the layers giving sometimes an intellectual text, sometimes a spiritual breath, or physical sensations. I feel that I go into the canvas. What you see is what I have pulled out of it and out of myself. Colors often develop through the application of transparencies. They collect on the terrain and crevices of the canvas, and mixed media I use to achieve texture and line.

Years ago, the work of Mark Tobey and Cy Twombly sent me into the exploration of marking. More recently, the work of the late Catalán painter, Antoni Tàpies inspires and encourages me to pursue the physicality of painting. I am grateful to them, and to a long list of painters from whom I’ve learned so much.