Terrestrial Expansions Series II, II Painting

I am an interdisciplinary artist using abstraction as a structure to explore interconnectedness.  I am drawn to abstraction as a lens to explore conceptual ideas in poetic frameworks.  I use geometry, line, color and pattern in my work in continually evolving improvisations that explore space, depth and surface. Recently I have been very interested in creating narratives in abstraction through a sense of movement in the composition whether through swooping and meandering lines, a sense of objects caught in mid-motion or repeated linear patterning that acts as a metronome capturing the artist’s hand in action. I’m also interested in disrupting this sense of movement to create moments of depth that recede into works through optical patterning that create moments that pull you in. In this way, I use movement and narrative as ways to create abstract works that unfold over time as you look and engage with them, and through that process it begins to tell a story. My paintings begin through the building up of the surface through staining, pouring, mark making, draping, tilting, blotting out, and staining both sides. I primarily work on tyvek and yupo because these synthetic surfaces each have unique characteristics that add complexity and texture to this beginning part of my painting process as well as a surface that I can paint on and get a crisp drawing line.  My work lives between painting and drawing, and I bring a collagist’s sensibility to my work as I juxtapose disparate elements side by side playing with edges and chasms of space that become filled with optical patterning, bold forms or abstract forms of nature. These contrasts in my work are an opportunity to explore a tension that exists between elements that are at odds with each other, and to seek ways to bring them into balance and harmony with a sense of playfulness. My work flows between art historical references in abstraction to game board design to space exploration and to forms found in nature.