Portfolio of Works

Nocturnes is an ongoing series. Night can be a time for self-reflection, absorbing thoughts without judgment, listening silently, bearing witness. It can also serve as a place to mark each day, with a ready acknowledgment of our insignificance on display in the night sky. Full of mystery and deep shadows, sound and silence, its colors show us a different world. 

These paintings are influenced by my interest in haiku, saying much while telling little. They invoke a state of not-quite-wakefulness. 

"Poetry is always in deep relationship with what it doesn't say, what it implies, and what it evokes." ~ Pádraig Ó Tuama

I've been thinking about the spring landscape as a metaphor for beginning a new life France. Growth under the rich earth may be starting to show itself, or building strength to push to the surface. The things that you don't know are there, they will reveal themselves in their own time.  The colors of new growth are a riot of color - like the checkered costume of a harlequin. The often stormy skies of spring heighten these colors with gray and atmospheric mists.

Summer in full bloom provides another metaphor - soft soil, brilliant blooms against the long day's light. The pull to make hay while the sun shines against the urge to seek shelter and rest during a hot afternoon. Finding pleasure in ripe fruit and relaxing into a warm evening. How do we enjoy the seasons of our lives?

The paintings from my 3 month residency in Savoie, France function as both note taking on and love letter to the Haut-Grésivaudan valley. Situated between Grenoble and Albertville, this glacier carved valley was cultivated by Celtic tribes. The valley flourished greatly after the Romans laid claim to it around the 1st century AD. In fact, grape varietals established as long ago as the 1st century BC are still a commonplace crop. Nutrient rich waters from the Alps flow into the Isère river as it shimmers milky blue down the valley. Referred to as ‘the beautiful garden of France’, through the millennia this productive land has traded hands repeatedly. Some peaceful, many not, these transitions are memorialized around the valley by the numerous chateaux and fortifications built to protect the various sources of power. 

Yet it is not the monuments and remembrances of war that captivated me. It is the landscape; the imaginings of the changes time has wrought upon it that plays out again and again in the paintings. There is no space here that is not influenced by the hand of man. One cannot look at the land without seeing human presence - from it, upon it and finally returned to the earth.  Rather than the relics of the wars fought, I began to see the land itself as commemorative of the valley’s people. The word terroir - the mix of soil, sun and moisture that define a place and a person’s immemorial connection to it - holds a deeper meaning to me now. The agrarian roots of the nation are embraced here.

The sublime beauty of the valley enraptures me each day, fills me with pleasure. I’m impelled to attempt to compress the meaning of the world into the simple pattern of my painting. With repeated record setting heat waves and drought, it also feels as if it is slipping away. Recording the details feels urgent and uneasy. These paintings reflect the changes of the natural world in the anthropocene epoch in a more realistic way than much of my work. The patterns I study in multiple repetitions are a visual exploration of theme and variation. This replication creates a sense of time, epochal or minute, but still ticking by. Here we are, caught up in this big rhythm.

This series of work reflects my experiences attempting to avoid smoke of the 2020 wildfire season on the West Coast. While Covid-19 complicated things, I was able to travel in my van safely and mostly escape the ill effects of smoke. My sketches and studies were the meditations to spark ideas.  Developing the images further in my studio has allowed me to expand on my thoughts of this time and enjoy the natural beauty once more. 

The difference between the clear and smoke filled days was dramatic, and reflected different palettes, vistas and depth of field. I perceived stronger, brighter colors as the air cleared after a few days of smoke.  Using a glazing technique on these pieces reflects that intensity. The same technique helped build the muted warm colors and indistinct shapes viewed through the veil of smoke in other works. A subtle shift in wind changed a scene in such a brief period of time I was inspired to record the environmental dichotomy, among other things. 

While fire is a necessary element of earth’s ecology, the combination of climate change, over 100 years of suppression, and the increase in population in the wildland-urban interface has created yet another devastating fire season. How are humans going to manage this conflict going forward? What clarity can be gained and which solutions will be obscured? The natural rhythm may be ancient, but each generation must learn to adjust as the rhythms change during its time here. My reflections ask more questions than they answer, and I hope my work brings you peace with the chaos of these thoughts. 

My relationship to the natural world, taking time to watch it evolve and change, also leads to self examination. Inspiring observations on my own aging and inner landscape, I've used self portraiture to reflect on my experience in society as a woman. The three works here are 25 years in the making, tracing my perception, belief in and definition of self. They examine changes, physical, emotional and mental, that are largely influenced by a wash of hormones. This transformation is profound, a sort of alchemy embedded in my cells – embedded in every woman's cells. 

Science shows that during the first two years of life, a female child's ovaries pump adult levels of estrogen. Then, again in puberty, hormones dramatically reorganize her brain circuitry, driving the way she thinks, feels, acts; and obsesses over her looks. Ostensibly to enhance her chances of procreation, this becomes her reality and sense of self for an unknown period of time – in the range of 40 years. It effects her treatment by society, family, and herself. 

Eventually, this reverses course and she undergoes another transformation directed by her hormones – a slow and uncertain turn toward menopause. This time the alchemy, and the woman, is essentially ignored by modern medicine. Yet no other primates, and only a few other mammals (certain species of whales), live meaningfully beyond reproductive age, as female homo sapiens do. Evolutionary science has just begun to discern the reasons behind this, and has few answers as of yet.