Artist's Statement

Art facilitates my expression of emotion, providing a means to translate personal reaction into visual imagery. My work may be a response to what I see in nature, what I hear on the news, or what I read and reflect upon regarding life cycles, the passage of time, and the essence of change. As art, science, and nature have always played integral roles in my life, I am quite conscious of scientific principles and the natural world while making art. A love of using hand tools to build and create harkens back to childhood when tools and scrap materials were aways available.

Early work often focused on the creation of detailed representational images as metaphor. Travel, life experience, and the use of varied mediums broadened my work toward a depiction of place, based on the confluence of memory and imagination. “Place” may refer to native habitats or the myriad networks of communicating connections both internal and external to us.

While the expression of feeling initiates my art, the process of observation and response to the inherent properties of the medium being used, guide a path to completion. Encaustic (beeswax mixed with Damar Resin) may be used in a very controlled manner, utilizing the same tools used for etching, carving, and sculpting, or conversely, allowed to respond to varying heat sources according to the elemental properties of the pigments added to create unique color. The translucency of wax reveals the history of process in each work and allows for layers of implicated meaning.

Personal and world events of the past decade have generated a plethora of mixed emotions requiring response. Recently, found objects and wood remnants collected over many years are finding their way into my art practice. I appreciate the beauty and history in these items, and the ingenuity and quality of workmanship in the made items. Arranging them, carving into them, fixing them together serves as meditation and time for reflection. Selected 2D encaustic paintings are also being reformed into small 3D sculptures. A thoughtful retaining of past experience and reworking previous creations confronts my perceptions of loss and inevitable change with renewed energy and purpose.

October, 2023