I paint to communicate; for me painting is a birthing of ideas via images. My
process involves studying images from many eras. Some images I have traveled
thousands of miles to see — up close in museums, villages, and at archeological
sites. Among other inspirations, I found myself responding to the work of an
amazing woman, Marija Gimbutas, who had unearthed and catalogued objects from
ancient times.
Searching out and studying these artifacts allows me to reach back to artists from
Paleolithic and Neolitihic eras, take their hands, see through their eyes and claim
those images for today. As discussed by Gimbutas in her seminal book, The
Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe:
“Art reveals man’s mental response to his environment, for with it, he attempts to
interpret and subdue reality, to rationalize nature and give visual expression to
his mythologizing explanatory concepts… The artist’s reality is not a
physical reality.”
Masks, hybrid figures, (universal) symbols, and animals were used as powerful,
transformative, and spiritualizing devices. They continue to inform and inspire
me today, especially the feminine figures, lovingly crafted, which are strangely
attractive and beautiful to my 21st Century eyes. In an age when women the world
over struggle against oppression, domination, and marginalization, I feel the
need to present, perhaps remake, the reverential and respectful images of the
ancient wise ones who knew the value of the regenerative feminine.
Ancient artists confronted the same eternal mysteries– life and death, nature and
natural disasters, power and oppression, that human beings are still subject to
today. Now as then, the artist transformed his subject in order to surpass, even
control, the obvious reality. Myth precedes science as the first investigation,
examination of life’s hard questions and unknowable secrets. Myth and mystery
inform my paintings, body adornments, and sculpture, and bring their echoes from
then to now.
BA, The Evergreen State College, 1988.
Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA Art League School, 1996-2000.
Study with sculptor and painter Robert Liberache, painter Dodie Petro, and artist Louise Williams.
Study travel to Austria, Bosnia/Hertzegovina, Bulgaria, England, Italy, Norway, Spain, and Sweden
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