As a psychiatric nurse specialist, I am keenly interested in persons living with severe mental disorders. One of my greatest joys over the years has been teaching painting to adults functioning with such difficulties. People and their uniqueness inspire me and fuel my passion.
Inspiration also comes from travel and daily observation of nature. As well, inspiration erupts from within, in forms of memories, uncanny emotions, spiritual experiences, dreams, grief reactions, and feelings of joy, exuberance, hope. I want to convey human pining for eternal beauty.
My work can be described as ethereal, romantic, expressionistic, sensuous and spiritual. It is romantic in that I am fascinated with the sublime as well as the beautiful, with a longing to convey emotional intensity, movement, elusive energy. I choose to disregard or distort aspects of the subject, consciously and unconsciously. I am not confined by the reference. Landscape and figurative references are sometimes obscured into illusion or abstraction, and can take on human characteristics. I like to create a sense of ambiguity, letting elements of nature become indistinct from one another.
I am captivated by the works Turner, Chagall, and de Kooning, and also drawn to the romantic beauty of John Singer Sargent. Postmodern artists who fascinate me include Gerhard Richter, Miguel A. D’Arienzo, Ross Bleckner, as well as the drawings of Jim Dine.
Recent Work:
My recent work such as Soar and Offering are born of intense, raw emotion. The result is primordial, organic mark making, both romantic and expressionistic. Verve and Evanescence also contain this unbridled emotion, with Verve attempting to express both the struggle and the light, while Evanescence attempts to convey the fleeting tantalizing nature of beauty. I want my work to evoke life in its fullness, from the tenderness of a hummingbird to the rawest emotion.
Recent work reflects places and experiences of joy and restoration. In the Celtic tradition, there is the belief that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places, that distance is even smaller. In the thin places, the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted a bit and we receive a glimpse of the glory of God. The light emanates. Although I realize that my aspiration is lofty, I continue to paint with hope that some sense of the immediacy of these experiences is evoked in the viewer, wittingly or unwittingly.
Painting people's pets has brought me great delight. I am honored when asked to commemorate a beloved pet. I feel grateful when people have commented that the portrait of their animal has a spiritual quality and that they treasure the painting.
Water is my passion. I am a swimmer and end up with water in my paintings, sometimes unintentionally. The power of water is magnificent yet it is ever present as our bodies’ chief solvent into which all dissolves and in which our cells are bathed. The waterfall series will continue as I explore the vast falls' ability to evoke both awe and a confused vertigo, and the sense of complete loss of control and its vitality. The structure underlying the falls both propels and agitates while reacting to the force, creating infinite patterns and shapes. Evanescence! My paintings are my humble attempt to hint of thin places.
