My
large-scale, layered paintings take forests and the surface of water as their
primary sources of reference. I’m drawn to the sensory experience of these
natural forms, the unending shimmer across my visual field. This kind of optical
density evokes the perception that everything in my scope of vision is equally
important, that everything is equally alive.
Artists
have long used ornament and decoration to speak to this perception of uninterrupted
alive-ness in nature, though the words “ornament” and “decorative” are commonly
used as pejorative terms in Western painting. This is an especially intriguing
observation at our present moment in history, a moment when we are
witnessing in full measure the flaws inherent in the industrialized world’s latent
assumptions about nature.
My mixed media works are not collages – rather,
they have evolved out of a combination of ink painting, silkscreen procedures,
and textiles techniques that use a resist to prevent certain areas of the
substrate from receiving applied color. By applying the resist with a
paintbrush, I am able to interweave additive and subtractive marks
simultaneously. The resulting paintings create an immersive experience of nature’s
dense shimmer, but also use repetitive mark-making to elicit a view of nature countervailing
to the one held by industrialized society.