Intention and content
The content of this exhibit, “Nature Defiant,” continues the direction I began in my 2004 exhibit, “Excess,” about which I wrote, “My paintings and drawings came out of a conscious awareness of my anxiety about where we are going in our world.”
Unlike the anxiety that I expressed in that exhibit, this work is devoted to celebrating the resilience of nature and enacting nature’s desire to assert itself through forms that derive from nature itself and flourish in the human imagination as it creates the forms of things unknown. When I began this process, many months ago, no one could have predicted the pandemic that has caused us all to pause. I too sometimes forget that we share this world with many life forms, unseen or ignored, until they assert themselves and demand my attention. I began by acknowledging what is right before my eyes. This is what I have been doing for the past couple of years…seeing what is obvious but also aware of the life teeming below the surface of the earth. It has brought me to a greater awareness of how our existence is interdependent.
My Process
When I was very young, about four or five, I loved coloring in coloring books. I particularly wanted to achieve a smooth flat color that did not belie the crayon as a tool. I liked the flat shapes that had no modeling. As often happens in my process, I start out doing something without understanding its origin. I was making these works without realizing their relationship to that five-year-old’s experience and I was enjoying the process as much as I did then.
To acquire the shapes I use in my work, I draw or photograph a plant or insect and then make a flat silhouette of it. I choose different shapes from the silhouettes and place them in different relationships to one another in an attempt to create new shapes and new possibilities. The challenges I choose to encounter are about all of the formal elements in making art: shape, color, form, line, value etc. In most of the works, I do not stop with only flat shapes but also add images I draw directly on the surface. I used primarily alcohol based permanent markers and this has added to the lively surface. I also collage different shapes from vinyl and other materials.
The content of this exhibit, “Nature Defiant,” continues the direction I began in my 2004 exhibit, “Excess,” about which I wrote, “My paintings and drawings came out of a conscious awareness of my anxiety about where we are going in our world.”
Unlike the anxiety that I expressed in that exhibit, this work is devoted to celebrating the resilience of nature and enacting nature’s desire to assert itself through forms that derive from nature itself and flourish in the human imagination as it creates the forms of things unknown. When I began this process, many months ago, no one could have predicted the pandemic that has caused us all to pause. I too sometimes forget that we share this world with many life forms, unseen or ignored, until they assert themselves and demand my attention. I began by acknowledging what is right before my eyes. This is what I have been doing for the past couple of years…seeing what is obvious but also aware of the life teeming below the surface of the earth. It has brought me to a greater awareness of how our existence is interdependent.
My Process
When I was very young, about four or five, I loved coloring in coloring books. I particularly wanted to achieve a smooth flat color that did not belie the crayon as a tool. I liked the flat shapes that had no modeling. As often happens in my process, I start out doing something without understanding its origin. I was making these works without realizing their relationship to that five-year-old’s experience and I was enjoying the process as much as I did then.
To acquire the shapes I use in my work, I draw or photograph a plant or insect and then make a flat silhouette of it. I choose different shapes from the silhouettes and place them in different relationships to one another in an attempt to create new shapes and new possibilities. The challenges I choose to encounter are about all of the formal elements in making art: shape, color, form, line, value etc. In most of the works, I do not stop with only flat shapes but also add images I draw directly on the surface. I used primarily alcohol based permanent markers and this has added to the lively surface. I also collage different shapes from vinyl and other materials.
