Hebraic Fragment Series #VIII Drawing

My work focuses on shapes and forms, exploring relationships in space, and juxtaposing colors and textures to create tension. My most recent series of pen and ink drawing and watercolors on Fabriano paper are all examples of being motivated by plant shapes in nature, birds in flight and abstractions of them to create specific moments in time or to magnify a portion of what the viewer sees. Hebraic Fragments, is a series of pen and ink drawings and digital prints. This series was inspired by the Aleppo Codex, which is the earliest known text of the Bible, handwritten by scribes over one thousand years ago. I was drawn to the beauty of the form of each letter written in Hebrew. The uniqueness of the handwritting and its ancient history inspired me to explore aspects of shape, texture, relationships and even color in the work. Gizmo Convention includes oil paintings and watercolors, using forms that are organic, and geometric and placed within an architecturally inspired landscape. These forms are colorful and often humorous. Some seem to hover or float in the air, as though randomly tossed there, while others appear like wind-up toys scattered in a surreal room. This work is a departure from themes of my earlier work, but it retains the strong graphic quality and sculptural feel that is always recognizable in my pieces. During my years as an art student, drawing and painting the human form was most exciting for me. I spent a year studying painting and printmaking in Rome, and gravitated to artists who approached the figure in both traditional and non-traditional methods, from Caravaggio to Richard Lindner. At the same time, I discovered the art of the Surrealists and was drawn to the works of Miro, Max Ernst, and Friedrich Hundertwasser. I adopted many of their techniques, including automatic drawing, decalcomania and frottage, to produce a substantial vocabulary of forms of every size and shape which I then used to develop my paintings and drawings. I made several trips to Puerto Rico, where I focused on the tropical forms of flora, especially the trees, and experimented with drawing flat images that had a cut-out quality floating on the page. The variations of green in the rain forest easily found their way into my watercolors. After spending a summer traveling through Asia, absorbing the art of Japanese woodcuts, ancient architecture and calligraphy, I found these elements influencing my printmaking and paintings.