Artist Statement
Patterns are unavoidable. In nature, in our buildings, all through our cities, and a part of our textiles, patterns become emblazoned in our memories and become embedded in how we catalogue our experiences. My paintings are very much about how the patterns from my life and from my past have come together, how they interconnect, and how they change and meld in my mind’s eye. They become colorful abstractions based on an overlapping and skewing of very tangible objects.
There is a power in patterns that are common to all of us, and though I pull from my own experiences, the familiarity of everyday images can conjure connections and memories in others as well. I create paintings by pooling images from the fence I walked past everyday, the iron steps of the fire escape out of my window, the never-ending stream of electric poles on a country road, the wallpaper that decorated the kitchen of my youth, the quilt I have slept under for years, and more. But these memories and patterns from my life are not unique, and my ultimate goal is to strike a chord in others and to awaken an awareness of the patterns that illustrate their own memories and experiences.
My paintings emerge through the layering of these patterns, and they grow to become images that are unexpected. Though I begin with an idea of the elements I want to combine, the actual merging of the layers renders something wholly new and maintains an element of surprise. As the combination of shapes come together, the panels become investigations in composition and color. Some elements become transparent shadows whereas others float to the surface, distinct and opaque. Elements overlap, disappear, and break apart. As I make these formal choices, my decisions remain based in a conceptual realm devoted to capturing the unreliability and whimsy of memory.
