My recent work is comprised of three themes that reflect our inability to control fate: Human experience in the natural world, dreams, and a Book of Hours based on medieval subjects in a contemporary context.
The first series of paintings, oil paint on multiple wooden panels, explores the theme of human experience in the natural world. We acknowledge ourselves as insignificant to the forces of nature yet build fences that imply ownership and dams to hold back rivers. We leap, dance, sing, and celebrate the changing seasons, a luminous pond, a dense forest, a favorite tree, and the intricacies of tangled branches. We contemplate the depths off the oceans and the seemingly immeasurable heavens—and my “usual suspects” appropriated from experience and art history; have become bit players in paintings that are no longer about them. For, as in one painting, a deceptively calm ocean has erased all evidence of the human drama played out on its sandy beach.
The second series of paintings, also oil paint on multiple wooden panels, is based upon dream images and associations. Dreams are similar to the ultimately unconquerable forces of nature. For like a storm or the wind, we have little power over our dreams once they have begun in the night mind. Something as simple and comforting as a glowing candle has the potential to swiftly morph into a menacing fire or in its most exaggerated form, a fiery sunset. An innocent carousel, controlled by an omnipotent clown, becomes a tedious ride for a horse imprisoned in plaster. The incidental bird with fluttering wings, heard early in the day, by night, has become an angel with an unrevealed message.
The third series of paintings, oil on treated paper, have been designed to resemble medieval illuminated texts as narrative images surrounded by significant intricate designs or images. Most of the figures, saints and angels, in these paintings have been appropriated from medieval illuminations. However they enact their celestial dramas in tandem to the very human drama of September 11. Their presence juxtaposed with the horror of that day implies the futility of expecting or anticipating divine intervention by request.
The historical antecedents of my work, panel paintings and illuminated texts, return to a time when art aspired to be intimate and contemplative. I have employed the pointillist technique of applying paint not only to enhance the intricacy of the images but also the vibrancy of the colors. My images come from art history, family photographs, and dreams.