My moment of deepest inspiration came to me while lying on my back in my atelier in the Cesky Krumlov Castle in the Czech Republic. For weeks I had roamed the castle and been dazzled by the colorful frescos, carved relief facades, gilded carriages, and other Rococo and Baroque ornaments that infused almost every square foot of the castle’s walls and ceilings. One afternoon, after hours of absorbing this nonstop cascade of visual delight, I lay down on my back on the tarps on my studio floor and closed my eyes to let their multitudinous reports from my day’s wanderings seep in more deeply.
Opening my eyes I looked up and saw that the ancient, dark, wooden cross beams that passed over the very space where I had been painting during my artist residency were adorned with fading, barely visible images of sinuously intertwining vines, variegated leaves, and drooping flower blossoms whose swollen heads verged on eruption. I suddenly became alarmed that such beauty teetered towards oblivion. I, and I suppose any artist, mourns when their marks fade into the forgotten past.
As my eyes roamed back and forth across the painted limbs, leaves, and flower heads above me I recognized the ecstatic impulses of an artist who had lived long before. Suddenly I ached for her marks to live on. I knew that my role was not to restore, or even replicate what she had done before, but rather to channel that echoing creative impulse through my own visual language. The essence of my current body of work was born that day.
My paintings use the intoxicating lure of beauty to call the viewer forward to look more deeply at the surface of reality. What you see may come up to greet your hand, as the sculptured and contoured forms that ripple across the surface beguile you to touch and beckon you to experience more art deeply.
To see these works in the flesh, please join us in the gallery, opening night for our New Artists Show.