ABOUT ME
Growing up my family was always on the move, I never really had a chance to acquire a sense of place. As an adult finding a place for myself became a calling. Ultimately, Albuquerque became my choice. My imagery reflects my long New Mexico experience.
I earned a bachelor’s degree in art and architecture. For me, form follows function, to use the adage by Louis Sullivan. Not that shapes or forms in my paintings provide for the better use of any physical space, but rather that they serve as a simplified version of what they depict.
ABOUT MY IMAGERY
There is an entire world right outside my front door. Plants perform everyday miracles…in full flower one day, withered the next. What interests me most about plants is the wallpaper-like patterns they create.
In the Bosque are slender saplings interspersed with large, craggy Cottonwoods, underfoot is a thick carpet of their teardrop shaped leaves. Tramping west, the river appears a twinkling gold through the dense brush.
In New Mexico the sky dwarfs all else. A bright sun in a sea of azure is the norm, but our skies are changeable. The clear blue can in an hour become a sea of thunderheads, dark battlecruisers, the deliverers’ of lightning.
When the sun is low in the sky, a shadow world is created where the meanings of objects are altered. Shadows are both inviting and menacing, doppelgangers for things and people I’m certain I know.
ABOUT MY PROCESS
More often than not, I paint on re-purposed canvases. I re-prime, but do not alter the texture that has built up on them over time, thus licks and daubs of paint from past images show through and live on in the new works. I integrate frames into the finished works by extending images out, onto them, and with a little imagination, out to infinity. I also assemble my re-purposed canvas panels together creating work that is formally composed, yet spontaneous and instinctive.
In summary, I paint what I know well, my medium is my history and my inspiration is place.