Versailles Afternoon Painting

My artwork is the reflection of a life in motion. To feel and experience a life well lived and translated through a visual narrative is what interests me. Challenging the painters hand with the poets mind to create a sensitivity on canvas is what inspires me. Hope is what I am searching for. I became a painter after working in the world of fashion and as a costume designer in the movie industry. I became a painter not to escape but to settle on what I had been moving towards. There was no grand plan, but it all makes perfect sense in hindsight. I had good teachers along the way who taught me about color, texture, and composition, and about story-telling and the cut and splice. Art is now my profession, and I approach it with the same dedication that I did my previous full-time jobs. The nitty-gritty. I start with an image, and let it sit. I look at it every which way. I ask myself: why? Why put it down on canvas? Why share it? Why not just let it be? I see painting as an invitation, a reaching out to someone not yet there. Success: they are moved enough to try to read between the lines, or just to re-internalize it, and let it sit. The poet may try to pat and ply it and turn it into words. A fellow painter may just say, "I see." A mother may see something else; a child may point out something that her mother missed; and someone else may ask "why"? I paint in order to share, to open a circle, and hope that it multiplies. My studio is a mess. And why not, I am attracted to unruly images; the sort that will not fit squarely into four corners and two-dimensions. I try to memorialize that special moment right before something really meaningful happens. Horses in mid-air about to land and continue to the next steeple, or seconds before the starting gate bolts open. I tend to settle on images full of movement and suspense. Chaos and anticipation: behind the scenes in fashion shows, where faces and bodies get transformed, packaged and re-packaged, and sent to the end of the runway and back. I am attracted to that moment right before the shower curtain gets pulled back and the whole theater goes deathly silent. "In the silence the wind grows/with its single leaf and its battered flower...." Neruda.