My work is about color, structure, and pattern as I strive to capture the vitality and freshness of landscapes or botanical imagery.  Embedded within the (sometimes abstract other times representational) work is a personal symbolism about life, struggle, pain, or pleasure.  Plants and gardens serve as visual metaphors expressing conflicting feelings about freedom and restraint in the human condition.

 

Often created with loose brushwork in vibrant color and texture, my paintings and drawings begin with images based on my own photographs and drawings.  They are later more fully developed on paper or canvas.  Working with gestures in ink on absorbent paper or in loose oil crayon studies, I employ line and mass to create spatial relationships.  Beginning with thin washes and then layering wet into wet on canvas or panels, my paintings evolve, in all or part, from representation to abstraction until a solution asserts itself.  It is a process of inclusion and exclusion, balance and instability.