Artist Statement
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My paintings start with a feeling, and the painting’s development flows from that guiding emotion. My paintings try to offer a suspended moment of a story that is evocative of that feeling. To create this narrative, I use realistic imagery that comes from my love of nature. I am also inspired by 17th century Dutch genre paintings.
The paintings are populated by the ordinary mushrooms, plants, and animals I find around my home. They are not sexy exotic creatures, yet they are also at peril, due to climate change, deforestation, and pollution. I feature these smaller, commonplace beings, to show that they too have worth and beauty.
17th century Dutch genre paintings, with their depiction of everyday scenes of ordinary life, marked a significant turning point in Western art, away from biblical and historical subjects. It stirs me to see this elevation of domestic life to a subject of art – of seeing not only beauty, but something profound in the everyday business of life.
I learn by observing nature. I enjoy trying to capture realistic detail and light. I paint on wood panels as I prefer the rigid surface. I work in oil paint, building layers of glazes, mixing new techniques with old. I like to constantly challenge myself, trying out new methods, and rarely repeat a color palette or a specific subject from one painting to the next. However, when I step back and look at my body of work, I see that I am detail oriented, and have a quiet, not rushed or violent way of expressing myself. I enjoy humor and the absurd, as well as having a deep sympathy for the fragility of life.
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Many of my paintings have mushrooms as their protagonists, supported by small animals, such as moths and beetles, as secondary characters. When I do not use humans to illustrate my subject, I avoid the implications and limits that come with painting a particular human. As mushrooms mostly don’t have preordained significance, they are a blank slate with which I can create meaning. With their stalks and caps, mushrooms do have something that can be understood as a body. The challenge is to imbue the mushrooms with human characteristics through gesture and composition, without resorting to human features (though you may find a bit of a belly here and there). My hope is that most people can see themselves or respond to a human quality in a mushroom, plant, or animal through the emotion I convey in the painting. In our ability to observe and relate to non-humans I hope to highlight empathy, not only for the natural world, but also for each other.
The idea for a painting always starts with an emotional response to something that is happening in the world, either in my own life or the world at large. I then set about trying to visualize a scene that would convey this feeling. The emotions I try to portray are often not easily definable, which is perhaps why I am painter and not a writer. I try to describe a mother’s love for her vulnerable child, the companionship of gathering around a table, a sadness for the overlooked passing of seemingly insignificant life, the frustrations of aging, the sensuousness of succumbing to nature, the exhaustion of battling chauvinism. Although these ideas are clear in my mind and serve as a guide in the development of my painting, I do not want a blatant portrayal of the painting’s meaning. I want the viewer to be able to bring their own experience to their understanding of my paintings. By painting from my experience, I trust that if I can paint honestly, the personal can become the universal. A theme of compassion runs throughout the work. By feeling some kind of recognition of oneself or emotional response to my paintings, I hope there is the realization of the interconnectedness and value of life.