My work is about how the ordinary indexes powerful, universal human experiences. My pieces narrate how deep human longings for powerful states such as freedom, or ecstasy, or solitude show up in mundane, simple and ordinary life: images, moments, figures, objects. Thus a boxer & his stool is a playful moment that surfaces an act of deep surrender; a birds’ wing suspended in an empty moody sky is about our longing for freedom….

I am classically trained, having studied art history, painting, drawing and photography in London, Rome, Philadelphia and New York. I primarily reference abstract expressionism, and particularly color field painters Matisse and Rothko. My love of rich, deep oil paint has been shaped through the drama, light and rich sensuality of 17th century Flemish and Baroque masters, especially Jan Van Eyck. Finally, I am influenced by stylized portraiture of the Art Nouveau period, and the gilt portraits of Gustav Klimt.

PROCESS

I paint both because I like oils — how gorgeous and sensual they are… and because the process of making a painting itself is intense and fulfilling. My process of coming to paint is critical to the work itself, and informs both my work’s narrative and rich, sensual expression through use of deep pigments of color. I use tantric practices, breathwork & hypnotherapy to the subconscious and unconscious. I use these modalities to reduce corticol control, sidestep the langauge-base of my brain’s left hemisphere and and access my rIght brain — the timeless, instinctive, ancient and ritualistic part of all of our brains. Once having access the subconscious and unconscious, I experience shapes, symbols and colors in a different and more intense way. Sometimes, in meditative states I am able to experience colors inside people, or tinting the air that fills buildings and rooms. These experiences eventually take shape in my paintings’ content, medium, and expressiveness.

BACKGROUND

I come to painting from a rich professional career in observation and careful looking, and translating what I see into representation. I started as a young photographer and creative non-fiction writer, studying art history and the anthropology of art in Rome, London and Philadelphia. After college and graduate school I worked as a writing teacher, teaching young people how to look at an empty sky or a doorway and find story and beauty. After leaving teaching, I studied at UCLA and became a professional anthropologist and ethnographer producing research studies. I specialized in writing thick, descriptive cultural studies of the indigenous in American Samoa & Hawaii, and of multicultural children in global pockets of cities — New York and Los Angeles.

All these modalities — photography, creative non-fiction, ethnography— have meant closely observing life and translating those observations into an image in words, language or picture. My intention has always been translation and the universal human experience, giving people objects and images that help them feel something about themselves— or perhaps more importantly, something about the very nature of what it means to be human.