The focus of my artistic inquiry is the deconstruction and reimagining of the painting tradition. The bulk of this study is manifest in site-specific installations composed of the detritus of artists and artisans. I consider myself part of a generation of artists who are reinvigorating painting for the 21st century by expanding the materials and vocabulary of painting. I work with recycled non-traditional materials that I repurpose into paintings, which I install on architectural structures such as walls. Investigating the meaning assigned to materials often leads me to new discoveries.
In 2003, I began utilizing paint detritus from other artists’ studios to create room-sized relief-like “paintings”, which are nearly entirely composed of recycled paint scraps. My Wingspan paintings, which I began in 2015, are born out of dance movements that unfold in paint on canvas with the passing of time. These paintings are connected to my own physical body, which I utilize as “a brush”. The paintings that I generate from this process function as records of movements of my ephemeral body. Although I have no predetermined form in mind, the paintings evoke themes from nature. Stones, geodes, tree rings, glaciers and the earth’s strata, silt and living biological specimens comingle in my exhibitions referencing time and timelessness.
More recently I started a new body of work entitled, Ocean Womb. The overlap of the sea and birthing stories fascinate me, as it is a locus where hope, mystery and sensuality mingle. For me, the ocean suggests the vastness of time and space and the immense diversity of life forms on the planet. As a child, I spent ample time on the coasts of Iceland and Virginia. I witnessed the atrocity of whaling first-hand, felt the joy and excitement of being thrown around by waves and running after crabs, and had a healthy fear of seals. These disparate oceanic experiences still spark my imagination today and I draw on them to formulate new installations and paintings. The objective of Ocean Womb is to innovate in the field of painting while inspiring empathy and support for terrestrial mothers and their aquatic counterparts though visual and audio storytelling.
Venus Walks on Pearls: Doorway to Ocean Womb
Last fall I was invited to create a new installation in response to an historic building at the Künstlerloge in Ratingen, Germany. Rooted in mythology and fiction, the resulting artwork entitled, Venus Walks on Pearls, revealed new avenues for me as an artist and led to the genesis of two new installations: An Ocean of Sky and Venus Walks on Pearls II. To create Venus Walks on Pearls, I laid pearls from my mother on a tiny section of a print of Peter Paul Rubens’s 1622 painting, “Portrait of Marie de Medici”. For me this section of this unfinished painting suggested something immense and celestial, not unlike the power and space that goddesses and queens have held in the imaginations of girls and women throughout time. The power of mythology and storytelling opened an additional pathway for me artistically. As a result, the new installations, videos, paintings, and audio works that I envision as part of Ocean Womb will lean more heavily into storytelling than my previous works.