Artist Statement
As a third-generation artist, I was raised in a home full of creativity. Summers spent in Northern Michigan served to heighten my sense of the sublime natural world. Eventually my awareness of its potential to reveal our truest selves became the cornerstone of my imagery. I see constant evidence of our attempts to pull our distant primordial roots into present day existence. We instinctively seek solace in the rich, sensory realm of nature. The imagery I create is a visual bridge to this desire for connection and balance.
My work contains several elements: gestural drawing, biomorphic forms, found objects and chiaroscuro. In art history terms, I draw upon the language of Abstract Expressionism- mark making and referencing the mythic are some of its typical signifiers. I understand artistic expression, not as something immutable, but as something shifting and organic.
My wood assemblages are an extension of my intent to create an object that is laden with a pre-linguistic essence. The wood assemblages are comprised of found objects, cedar charred in the Japanese shousugiban method and barn wood.
I believe wood is the perfect material to embrace and condense the ‘stream of time’, as it is heavy with its own history.
While I am working, I try to trust my deepest impulses. I feel as if my hand, holding its tool, is a conduit connected to what Carl Jung calls the animus, the truest source of our creative ability. To further tap into that fragile space, I have taken up the meditative practice of daily ink gestures know by the Japanese as hitsuzendō.
It is my hope that by embracing the alive, intimate and immediate act of constructing and painting, I can give the viewer a moment of transcendence.