Artist's Statement
Painting is a shared emotional experience. In my own work, I begin with a powerful memory linked to a particular place in time - to an emotional experience with the physical world. The art is then the distillation and tracing of that memory through color, texture, shape and brushstroke to the emotional place where it lives. This might be a place of sadness, happiness, peace, exhilaration, or awe. The acknowledgment of emotion is transformative and teaches the lesson that everything in this world moves forward - beyond the edges of canvas, beyond us, beyond the memories themselves.
My work is deeply personal, reflecting icons and reference points of a lifetime spent in Southern California. I have been in the ocean, and on it, for hours - mesmerized by its blue, its froth, the colors ranging from gray to green, the phosphorescence and grunion that comes in with a full moon at low tide. I have experienced the breathtaking downhill run of an unbroken ski trail in the High Sierras and the fearsomeness of a blinding white out. I have baked under the unforgiving California sun, deep within its deserts and on the streets of its cities.
As a minimalist, the progression of my work has been an experimentation with color - or lack of color - and the challenge of communicating within a narrow range of execution. One of my early series, “Fog”, explores the use of black. Rebelling against the notion that black is, by its nature, “sad”, I used it to represent the soft sparkle of coastal fog as it rolls in over beaches and city. In “High Sierra”, I explored white - again the absence of color - but here a force of nature with strong vertical geometry representing not only the heights of the mountains but the force of downward gravity. In “The Golden State” series, I dove into the colors of the sun and the way it has so powerfully shaped and defined us socially and culturally in Southern California. My most recent series “San Clemente”, is perhaps the most personal. It is the exploration of a particular time and place in my life in the Riviera District between 1962 and 1998 - an area rich with Southern California surfing lore. It is a story that begins with building a dream...to loss...and moving, finally, to acceptance. It is the history of a family told through the eyes of paint.
Working with minimal color, as well as with materials such iridescence, fluorescence and pearlescence, my goal is to capture and reflect light, both to imitate the changeable conditions of nature, as well as the shimmering potency of memories. And through this, to give the viewer a path to connect with the essence of their own memories so they might experience them more fully in their own life.
Painting is a shared emotional experience. In my own work, I begin with a powerful memory linked to a particular place in time - to an emotional experience with the physical world. The art is then the distillation and tracing of that memory through color, texture, shape and brushstroke to the emotional place where it lives. This might be a place of sadness, happiness, peace, exhilaration, or awe. The acknowledgment of emotion is transformative and teaches the lesson that everything in this world moves forward - beyond the edges of canvas, beyond us, beyond the memories themselves.
My work is deeply personal, reflecting icons and reference points of a lifetime spent in Southern California. I have been in the ocean, and on it, for hours - mesmerized by its blue, its froth, the colors ranging from gray to green, the phosphorescence and grunion that comes in with a full moon at low tide. I have experienced the breathtaking downhill run of an unbroken ski trail in the High Sierras and the fearsomeness of a blinding white out. I have baked under the unforgiving California sun, deep within its deserts and on the streets of its cities.
As a minimalist, the progression of my work has been an experimentation with color - or lack of color - and the challenge of communicating within a narrow range of execution. One of my early series, “Fog”, explores the use of black. Rebelling against the notion that black is, by its nature, “sad”, I used it to represent the soft sparkle of coastal fog as it rolls in over beaches and city. In “High Sierra”, I explored white - again the absence of color - but here a force of nature with strong vertical geometry representing not only the heights of the mountains but the force of downward gravity. In “The Golden State” series, I dove into the colors of the sun and the way it has so powerfully shaped and defined us socially and culturally in Southern California. My most recent series “San Clemente”, is perhaps the most personal. It is the exploration of a particular time and place in my life in the Riviera District between 1962 and 1998 - an area rich with Southern California surfing lore. It is a story that begins with building a dream...to loss...and moving, finally, to acceptance. It is the history of a family told through the eyes of paint.
Working with minimal color, as well as with materials such iridescence, fluorescence and pearlescence, my goal is to capture and reflect light, both to imitate the changeable conditions of nature, as well as the shimmering potency of memories. And through this, to give the viewer a path to connect with the essence of their own memories so they might experience them more fully in their own life.