biography | statement

I am an expressionist oil painter whose work explores the psychological world through the figure. The saturated blends of color and exaggerated movement of the subjects break open commonplace living into raw expression. I adore the shape and the ability the human body has to move, and the strength the human soul has to adapt and endure. I explore the differing consolations and needs of human beings, and our individual and collective connections to the world.

With intensity and devotion I feel a need to recycle the energy and materials around us. This includes finding, or buying secondhand, much of what I use to paint with. It employs a constant discovery of what lays buried in our inner self and what we use to heal. The content of my work involves the need to care for our body and minds as we need to care for our earth and its resources, as I have found the health of humans is inextricably linked to the energy that makes up our world as a system. I try to weave beauty through the painting of postures and movements of the body that leave me in awe, strike me with feeling, or express an emotion.

The viewer is invited to become a voyeur into my insight and outward vision. The paintings are a visual expression of my life, my need to flee from powerful situations and my survival depending on coming to terms with that which has been experienced, and my desire to capture the body in motion and at play. Sometimes the figures jump from their environment and sometimes they melt, the struggle of being human is displayed by the subjects pictured in my work.

The faces series was a sort of sleepwalking venture that I took right after my husband died. People didn't know what to say or do, and I ran out of questions to maintain a decent conversation. Instead, I hung out with my kids and looked at the faces of passer-bys, really looked. Listened to music, let thoughts slip away and just absorbed what was readable in the features of strangers, who didn't seem so strange to me anymore. People don't always express things the same way, but if we don't express what is wrong, we can't be helped. Faces constantly change. I didn't want to show just the nose and the eyes, the pretty or the ugly, I wanted to illustrate the similarity of our needs and desires within the energy of our environment – to let go of the border or edge and blend, instead of contrast, the surroundings with the face. The face is an open book of expression and a window for change. After care giving for several years I was starved to look into faces that didn’t need me, and was surprised to find we all need, even if we aren’t at the throes of a terminal illness, we all need connection-harmony-human reflection.