My imagined worlds don’t obey the rules of the real but operate in liminal places where they mesh or collide. Where is the edge of the rain, the exact place where it begins and ends? How can a waterfall magically appear out of seemingly nowhere? In my previous work this has extended to giving a new story to a mythical Marie Antoinette, moving her into the 20th century, ignoring the ‘truth’ of history.
Making art has always been a revelatory process; without a pre-ordained plan but I relish diving into the unknown. Could the slip of a brush or the accidental splash lead to new possibilities? Could this paint blob suggest a rock or a puddle? My insistence on a color, shape, or texture is frequently ‘corrected’ by the painting telling me what it wants and needs. This continues on a broader scale, I usually think I am doing a certain thing, but as I work I learn I am really doing something else.
Among my influences was living in New Mexico for two years while in graduate school and continuing to be mesmerized by the fantastical landscape and vistas after these years. Clashes between the ways I think about the landscape and its actualities continue filtering through my imagination. Among the artists I have found to be influential, are Charles Burchfield and George Inness. I have certainly delighted in the narratives enhanced by the evocative landscape settings of the painters of the rococo. The drama of the forest still lifes of painters like Rachael Ruysch or Otto Marseus Van Schreick is seductive, as is the work of Charles Burchfield. In contemporary painting the colors and touch of Inka Essenhigh and Lisa Yuskavage are always surprising as is their inventiveness.