Baby Daddy Painting

After decades of being a poet and playwright, I began a new journey as a visual artist in 2015 at the age of 62. And yet my primary interest as a painter is the same as it was for me as a writer: to explore layers of consciousness, the overlap of place/displacement -- how everything is relational and in flux. But: however orderly I begin, I know the aha moment comes at the intersection of simplicity and mess. Yes, there’s a stillness in my paintings, but underscored by a mysterious agitation. There is urgency and disquiet, which reflect my stance as a woman -- an inward stance. I love a story, especially a half-told, unfinished story, which is my process as a painter. I start with Who, what, when, where: I see my figures as staged “characters,” until eventually I realize I know nothing about them, and so I can give them up to the world. Ironically enough, people view my paintings as political, provocative, as kicking up dust. What can I say, except that I have to destroy the image -- whether it is an intimate family scene or a portrait or a landscape -- in order to reach the metaphysical. And what is “metaphysical”? For me, it is the balance between “neither here nor there,” of reaching the contentment of knowing nothing.