Bittersweet Painting

Female figures, animals and the natural world pulsate in jewel tone colors with the wonder for the world that I have had since my childhood. Working in oil, gold, silver, and palladium leaf I employ traditional painting techniques bringing contemporary subject matter to bear. Art making is the wondrous, mysterious, magical process of emergent beauty. Michael Pearce states in 'Art In The Age of Emergence'  "Water is made of oxygen and hydrogen, but neither of those two elements is wet. Wetness is an emergent quality of water. Like wetness, the emergent experience of beauty is a quality that is greater than the sum of its parts."  I compose objects and a story emerges.  I arrange shapes and a composition and movement is revealed.  I arrange colors, build up paint and the emergent quality of wonder appears to reflect on the complexity of life. I work in a style that blends historical and contemporary worlds. Each generation wants to cause a revolution, burn off the dead wood of the civilization their own is built upon. The question is what to hold onto. In my paintings I retain art historical references and techniques. There exists a duality in emergence being greater than the sum of its parts and yet retaining a sense of its parts at the same time.