Artist statement

I am a studio artist  located in the Adirondack Tri-lakes area. 

I am interested in viewing the unseen, and I see art as a tool to do so. The details of a feeling are hard to capture in visually but form, transparency, light, and abstraction are useful tools. Flattening planes of perspective and repetition in a drawing can communicate infinity, timelessness, and getting lost within our own emotions. Organizing shape and form within a print communicates atmosphere and feeling. Using transparencies and abstraction in paint communicate the obscurity of memory or vision. I’ve started thinking of art as a complex language and I am only now learning the alphabet.

There is something very beautiful about slowing down and taking the time to notice the space we occupy and the small overlooked things that surround us. That is essentially what I strive to do. My work mainly explores nature, a subject that I have been surrounded by for most of my life. Recently I have focused on using my art alphabet (transparency, texture, and space) to portray the different perspectives with which we can approach nature: from a distance and from within, from science and from imagination, as a protector and a destroyer. With those different perspectives in mind, I appreciate the size and scale shifts from organic shapes found in nature to the human figure, to architecture, to my own body as I create, and even to the viewer as they approach my work.

The spaces I have been currently visiting (ornate churches and cathedrals) and the spaces I grew up in (mountains and woods) have inspired my most recent exploration. Sanctuary is a place found in a man-made structure adorned with a cross but it is also found in nature. The cross of two beams of wood can take the form of a living tree. Sanctuary is a space that makes many uncomfortable while making others feel at home. It is a place that is greatly protected, and a place that some seek to destroy. There are many parallels between indoor spaces and outdoor spaces which I find fascinating.

It begs the question: what space do currently I occupy? Am I inside or outside? Am I uncomfortable or at home? Am I a protector or a destroyer?