Statement

My work is about my direct response to gathered items around me. The seduction is found in the relationships of objects placed together along with their color relationships. The joy is finding playful connections between the elements in the still-life. I’m interested in how objects can mimic or play off one another in color, shape, texture, pattern and possible visual riddles. Playing with flatness and fullness in the spatial energy. Looking to where I can crop the set-up to push up against the edges to keep the motif charged. Where a set of objects takes me is never exactly known ahead of time. I’m deciphering what is happening as I’m painting once I have the set-up in front of me. There’s a dialogue between the objects and colors. I search for the beauty in everyday objects. What it is that catches my eye?

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Art critic John Berger, “Selected Essays,” 1954

If you have never painted, you cannot fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse’s mastery of pure color. It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one color to dominate or by muting all the colors. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colors together like cymbals, and the effect is like a lullaby.