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My work walks the edge between traditional and modern, feminine and masculine, expressive and calculated, the light and the dark
I have been oil painting since I was 8 years old. My first paintings were of the Breck Shampoo Girl illustrations on the backs of magazines. I now believe I was engaged in an attempt to connect with the Feminine as a result of not living with my mother from the age of 3. I felt a deep need to express myself and my pain through painting and writing. Eventually I came to a place of wanting to paint for its own sake and I chose flowers as a vehicle to allow me to explore with color, light, and composition, to play with paint, squeezing and mixing luscious colors onto my palette and canvas. I’m not interested in the subject as I work, but in an abstract game with rules that allow me to ultimately dance with energy–emotional and spiritual. Again, I enjoy the paradoxical edge of the surface skin of paint that alludes to a deeper reality that unifies it all. I want to express/allow freedom, joy, spirit. Although I’ve thought of flowers as merely an excuse to paint, I’ve come to realize that they are simultaneously much more than that for me. As a being who has always had a deep interest in the nature of the missing feminine (a la Da Vinci Code), they represent on some level the symbolic Feminine Face of God, the right side of the brain, the beautiful “silent” witness. I have taught Beginning Drawing using Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain at Los Angeles City College for a dozen years. This teaching has increased my passion for more of what our overly left brained, patriarchal culture and world in general lack. These are not just pretty pictures of flowers, although they may appear that way. They are informed by an extensive art historical training, a passionate feminist perspective, and a lifelong search for my Mother. My aim is to heal and bring joy to myself and others. |
