Education College of William and Mary, B.A., Painting and Printmaking, 1982 Artist Statement I’ve come back to painting in the last five years after a long absence. I began an intense relationship with art on a school field trip when I was 10 and saw a show of Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt’s works at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. From that time, through my mid-20s, when I was working on M.F.A. in painting, I had no other goal in life than to become an artist. Although I finished my M.F.A. degree, at some point during my graduate career, I found that the vocabulary of the visual arts was no longer adequate for me to address my most vital inner voices and concerns, whether they be personal, political, or social, and I turned for many years to other avenues of expression, in particular radio production and community radio. |
Many years later, I’ve come back full circle and re-discovered that the language of art is, in fact, the richest of all communications for me. Interestingly the visual concerns that I first saw in those paintings of Mary Cassatt almost 40 years ago are still primary with me: color, a richness of stroke and texture in her application, her strong preoccupation with the abstract, two-dimensional composition that she learned from Japanese prints, and an emotional richness and sometimes wariness in working within a familiar circle of family and friends. My other strongest influences have been the Abstract Expressionists, Fairfield Porter, and the California School, particularly David Park and Richard Diebenkorn. The metaphorical richness and power of the work of Louise Bourgeois is an inspiration. Although my work has most often been landscape, both before and after my painting hiatus, there are strong autobiographical and personal elements throughout the paintings, and the figure is often implied even when it isn’t present. I’ve found that I can say everything I want through this rich medium, and I’ve come to appreciate the implicit over the explicit. |