My work has a sense of the unknown, a spirit, as it emerges rather than images that are modeled from a pre-set idea. I use words to describe it such as emerging, spontaneous, drawing of personal perceptions and the viewer’s deep psychology, allowing the work to speak in different ways to different people.  Because I do not start out with a predetermined image to replicate, the spontaneousness and newness give me great pleasure and delight. It feels like life. Never  knowing what will develop!

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To describe my artistic endeavors. I started working in clay while living on Maui and in Mill Valley, CA. The pieces showed an organicness in nature. These were often thin pieces with light reflecting through the sculptural forms. While living in Amsterdam a few years later, I accidentally found my passion when I took a stone carving workshop by Zimbabwean artists. From that time on, I sculpted for many years doing what is called 'Direct Carving' or 'Spirit Carving' in stone with marble, or alabaster being my preferred mediums. When I sculpt, I usually start with an emotion or perhaps a loose idea of a form taken from the organic shape of the rock. What emerges is not something that has been pre-planned; it's always a bit of a wondrous process and surprise…even to me.

 

In the States, the pieces were cast in limited edition bronzes and sold to my delight. In Mexico, I discovered casting sculptures in resin, which I finished by painting the pieces in bright colors. It fits nicely in with the culture with its vibrancy.

 

After many years, I found stone carving heavy and was drawn to a new interest: painting. Much lighter to carry around! Painting has grown from my initial works with coloring organic elements. I miss the three-dimensionality of sculpting and its tactile quality as I would run my hands over the pieces to get a sense of their rhythm and curvature. But moving along with the reality of weight and lifting, I have increasingly enjoyed the fluidity and magic of moving colors across a 2-dimensional canvas.

 

Now, when I paint, I want to allow the process to create the images as I did with sculpting. Again, to allow spirit to guide the process. I may start with just a color combination or perhaps a loose image in mind. I very much like the shapes and images to take a form emerging through the viewer's own deep psychology and perceptual orientation. Often, people see different things and give different meanings in my works so that the work becomes more of a mirror of the viewer's perceptual and psychological inner life than when everyone sees the same particularly clear image. Somewhat like a Rorschach test, there is a projective quality from the viewer onto the work as they make sense out of what they see according to their own inner life experiences.

 

I paint in acrylics and oil and use inks, dyes, and illuminated paints to bring forth the light, allowing different lighting effects to emerge as you change positions in front of the painting. It is, for me, a wondrous work in progress...my life and my artistic expression.