Artist Statement
My art has always been about telling a story. Whether I am looking out at the landscape around me as I set up my easel, or glancing inward on the visual narrative spinning in my mind, I am always telling myself a story. I have written and published many books using a carefully selected palette of words to give the right weight and depth, or levity to my story. Writing has taught me to paint pictures with words; painting has taught me to tell my stories with shapes and colors and composition.
Color is what pulls me to the studio each day, as well as the visceral feeling of different consistencies of sanded or textured board or papers. I love exploring the weight of colors, the edges where light meets dark, cool meets warm, blue meets orange to turn my flat grey board into the view from the land I stand or a narrative from my imagination that I can share others.
I have spent the last fifteen years exploring the different brands of pastels and how they work together. I am hooked on soft, rich, pastels because they are made with a minimum of binder, allowing for the purest pigments. I use a layering system, often creating an under-painting of a variety of pastel pigments blended together with alcohol or Turpenoid. and choose the brushes I use to blend with that give me the texture I want on the final surface. A worn, stumpy brush will give the texture of grass in the foreground,
or of woven textiles in clothing. A softer flat brush will blend smoothly for man-made surfaces and the lack of contrast and detail in distant vistas.
But it is color, always color, and the place where light meets the edge of another object that gives me the feeling I used to have as a child when something magical just happened. That magic for me is having the image I create match the image or emotion of the story of my mind and that I can share that with others.
Color is what pulls me to the studio each day, as well as the visceral feeling of different consistencies of sanded or textured board or papers. I love exploring the weight of colors, the edges where light meets dark, cool meets warm, blue meets orange to turn my flat grey board into the view from the land I stand or a narrative from my imagination that I can share others.
I have spent the last fifteen years exploring the different brands of pastels and how they work together. I am hooked on soft, rich, pastels because they are made with a minimum of binder, allowing for the purest pigments. I use a layering system, often creating an under-painting of a variety of pastel pigments blended together with alcohol or Turpenoid. and choose the brushes I use to blend with that give me the texture I want on the final surface. A worn, stumpy brush will give the texture of grass in the foreground,
or of woven textiles in clothing. A softer flat brush will blend smoothly for man-made surfaces and the lack of contrast and detail in distant vistas.
But it is color, always color, and the place where light meets the edge of another object that gives me the feeling I used to have as a child when something magical just happened. That magic for me is having the image I create match the image or emotion of the story of my mind and that I can share that with others.