TERRA FIRMA VIII Painting

I am a painter that creates “expressive images,” gestural abstracts that fuse elements of perception, randomness, and control. My works are wild abstracts with bold, vibrant colors, and emotional subtle abstracts that connect with a sense of harmony. In my journey as a self-taught artist, I paint what I feel, not what I see, capturing the spirit of conversation to communicate emotions, feelings and ideas that cannot be expressed in words. My art explores life in motion -- the beauty I see around me, a memory, or a dream. I combine color, texture and design to tell the story. An artist cannot control the flow of alcohol inks any more than controlling the changes that occur in life. In my process as an artist, I embrace the unpredictability of alcohol inks on synthetic paper, canvas, and plexiglass. I guide the pigments through a delicate balance between control and surrender. One drop of blue ink will be almost black,but after alcohol is added, fourteen or more different shades of blue will appear depending on the imprecise amount of liquid added. The inks can become transparent or can be deeply pigmented. I use a variety of implements to push, pull,blow, brush, dilute, squiggle, smudge, tilt, and blot the ink into a mirage of forms. Painting in reverse on glass or plexiglass intrigues me because I must reverse my thinking about background vs.foreground. When I flip the plexiglass around, I am thrilled to see the vision I have accomplished. I began my artistic journey as a young teen in Chicago where I was profoundly impressed by “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Seurat. I attended scholarship classes at Chicago’s Art Institute where I began studying various great artists like Seurat, Richter and Helen Frankenthaler who inspired me to explore my own artistic vision with insight, perseverance, and determination. These artists were a starting point to return to my art after raising a family and a career as a successful film producer. After college graduation, being a starving artist was not possible. I moved to Los Angeles and became an award-winning TV commercial producer. My career in film and advertising industries as a producer of story-telling images was productive and fulfilling. I was collaborating with great creative teams, but I found that the projects were always about someone else’s vision, not my own. I wanted to find my own art form. Charcoal drawing and acrylic painting weren’t rewarding.