Artist's Statement

As a lyrical abstractionist, I incorporate spontaneous expression and illusionary space coupled with occasional imagery into my work. Since studying under Sam Gilliam in the 1980s, my work honors a long lineage of attention to color and process. My palette is influenced by a pantheon of artists that inform my practice as I continually seek the moment in my paintings.

For me, the act of painting takes on a balance of contradictions: intentionality vs. spontaneity; gesture vs. control; conscious vs. subconscious; materiality vs. the ethereal; representation vs. the evocative; contrived vs. authentic. The works themselves are negotiations between expanding and contracting notions of what painting is and can be. They are conversations with myself - using language composed of mark, gesture, and color.

The work is rooted in history, memory, place and time. The marks become a bibliography of forms, a glossary of reference points, which include vessels, natural forms, and calligraphy, among others.

Over the past decades my work has cycled between research, study, practice, obstruction, impulse/instinct, and back again. Recently, my process feels freer, and I have let go of external perceptions of completion, hence the use of the word study in the titles of work completed in 2020.

Recent work delves into the recurring themes coupled with gesture and immediacy, building stories through the layers.