ARTISTIC STATEMENT

My painting mines the life cycle's mysteries that play out in the garden. Germination, pollination, migration and the aggregation and disintegration of life cycles inspire and share my studio process—my garden and studio cohabit. I am unsentimental about the biological thrust toward decomposition. Often when I paint I drop my leaves all at once, with hopes of a glimpse of luminous and invisible worlds.

I translate currents of water and air, the restless movement of fire, and the exquisitely earthbound tension of holding still into the layered texture, movement, pattern, and rhythm of paint. I mix acrylic mediums with fluid inks, metallic sheens with dark mattes to reveal the elusive qualities of nature as a subtle substance derived from a coarse one, something that is simultaneously immaterial/material at the same time, and always transforming.

I apply color in a fluid state from bottles with syringe tips, allowing the weight and spontaneous movement of the paint to have a say in creating form and mixing pigment. Repeated pours build up a textural surface that plays with light. I do preparatory drawings to develop images, but the painting process is driven by intuition with narrative in the back seat.

BIOGRAPHY

Qi, the flow of energy that sustains life, is the visceral force in my painting. Qi manifests in five expressive elemental forms—fire, water, earth, air, wood. I experience the deep intrinsic connection we all share as an optimistic (optic-mystic?!) empathy with life's organic processes (transformations of Qi): naturally messy, fecund, playful, and curious! My artistic path reflects a dynamic interplay with my other life practices as a children's art teacher, gardener, and Breema Bodywork/Shiatsu instructor and practitioner. Both my theoretical study and direct, hands-on experience in Breema Bodywork/Shiatsu inform my artistic expression of the energetic fabric of nature.

I began teaching art to children at age sixteen as an arts and crafts counselor in a farm summer camp. Goats ate our bean and noodle mosaics in the night, a lesson in impermanence. In near forty years of facilitating art classes for children and teens I affirmed again and again the power of art making. The authentic, expressive, and humorous creations of so many soul-satisfied young artists inspires me to continue to approach my own art practice with fresh and adventurous eyes.

My mother was also an artist, and my upbringing was endowed with full participation in a myriad of cultural experiences in New York City; I grew up in museums, galleries, concerts and dance performances. I graduated from New York City's High School of Music and Art in 1965 and attended Cooper Union School of Art for a year before migrating to California, where I entered an unorthodox apprenticeship in the UC Berkeley ceramics department, then chaired by Peter Voulkos. The community of fabulously talented artists sharing ideas and studio space in Northern California was incredibly rich, and this was the real seedbed of my artistic development.