Untitled Marine Vista #108 Painting

My interest in visual images centers around the relationship of the universal and the personal. Rather than being in opposition to each other, these form a relationship that can lead to further insight. My work probes this idea in various ways, but my principal interest began with meditations on the mechanism of memory and its parallels to the production of images. In our process of memory, a simple image – one that we might call universal – can prompt the viewer to recall far more than what is depicted. I seek to activate personal memory by reducing images to their most basic components. I utilize simplified, familiar and repeated elements to act as a stimulus for recalling images which are then colored by the viewer’s unique experience and point of view. In my paintings, I investigate the nature of paint as substance, exploiting the unique characteristics of its components of pigment and medium to create pure color and structure. By use of an almost undetectable—but definitely perceived—change in the thickness of the paint, those elements of the painting which are closer in the image depicted are in fact physically closer to the viewer, creating a truly unique effect of perspective. At the same time, a meticulous layering of expressive brushstrokes within each plane of precisely mixed pure color defines the features of the landscape.