Me on Me

In the work that follows, I share with you my personal favorites, work that hangs safely in the studio free from the danger of being overpainted, work that I actively miss seeing because it has been adopted and is living in its forever home, work that I never get tired of looking at. What do these works have in common? Often it is the bold, expressive line that binds my soul. Often it is the sumptuous surface texture that holds the key. Sometimes it's color, singing to me a siren song. Sometimes it is the circumstances in which the work was created or how the work arose that feeds my special connection. In the mysterious way of art, I truly recognize myself in these paintings.

One of my most recent paintings, Ocean Life evolved through several iterations. Each arose, and was judged lacking in some way. I persevered, confident that if I kept working, the work would eventually become resolved. I was also confident that each layer added interest as the history of the piece was laid down, covered, and then revealed in bits and pieces and glimpses in later stages. When the final image came together, it fell into place with ease and began to speak to me of the teeming life hidden just beneath the mirrored surface of any significant body of water.

Dancing burst forth while I was processing a dear friend's breast cancer diagnosis. She and I privately named it Dancing in Defiance of the Beast. Reluctant at the time to share fully the emotion and fear of those stark moments, I shortened the name when it made its debut into the world.

As I completed Dancing I was settling into a new medium, a medium that felt like arriving home after a long absence. Symphony was my first full scale, completely loved oil and cold wax painting. It's now in the collection of one of my staunchest supporters. It pleases me immensely to know that she enjoys it daily.

Dancing, 15x22" 2025 (Sold)

Symphony, 16x20", 2025 (Sold).

Make a Love New, 24x30", 2025.

While working on Make a Love New, I read the poem, Homestead, by Justin Carter. The title is a line from the poem. A line that captured my imagination and became my mantra during the hours in the studio finishing the painting. What a world we might make if we turned our attention to making love new across all our connections - personal, familial, and societal!

I once read that artists fall into two camps, those that act as mirrors and those that act as windows (John Szarkowski, Mirrors and Windows : American Photography since 1960). Am I a "mirror reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?" I am a mirror. My work is intuitive, it is a striving to find the essence, to say the nonverbal, to plumb myself. These works are excavations of my being.

Birth of My Star, 24x30", 2025 (Sold)

Heading Towards Eternity, 20x24", 2025.

Sedimentary, 24x30", 2025.

Rosetta Stone, 24x30", 2025.

Upward, 16x20", 2025.

Upward is a bit of an anomaly. As I worked on it, a landscape emerged unbidden. Once it was there, it seemed to assert itself and I felt I had to embrace it. It drew me in and spoke to me. All the academic voices in the back of my mind chided me - the piece did not fit into any coherent theme or series in my work. I decided that I did not care two figs about that. Perhaps one day it will become clear to me why this image arose and what it is quietly whispering.