| Painting is
for storytelling. It was a logical extension from Chinese calligraphy
which was my main art training. Calligraphy
informs my sense of design- off-centered balance, asymmetry, and
simplicity-there is no need to embellish; everything has to serve
a purpose. I love the brush. When I started to paint, color, line,
and paint had not been contaminated or controlled.
I
work directly on canvas from memory and sketch. The process
of abstracting figurative and representational elements,
moving shapes around, breaking them down,
flattening, orchestrating, continuously exploring and correcting,
distorting and simplifying is how I achieve each design..
I
love figure drawing but it is only a tool to catch or remember
the gesture. Color is primary in conveying the emotional temperature
of the story. The decision making of mixing and laying wet
into wet, pulling color into color, the variety of surfaces
is complex,
challenging and seductive. I am guided by color harmony want
to create a space to rest from a moment that is familiar, not
stressful. My role models are Matisse, Leger, Lawrence, Bearden,
Avery, Bonnard.
My
collages celebrate
the people in the communities I know. The figure is
the guiding motif. When someone doing something catches
my attention, I use memory and a sketch to reframe
that moment and make it ever present.
I
simplify figures and construct space by using blocks of
color broken by pattern. For every figure the challenge
is to capture the essential gesture. The stories I create
marry abstract with representational and mirror the beauty
and adventure of our humanity.
|
For
the last twenty-five years. I have religiously thrown
myself into experiencing and capturing the cherry blooms as
they explode into being in April bringing the first joyful thrusts
of spring. The ritual days are long and full of paying attention,
trying to absorb the swarming pools of color, the people delighting
in the rapture of the moment, the sounds and softness as the
blossoms envelope a few days, calling out all the city dwellers
sequestered in Brooklyn apartments all the long harsh winter.
My
regimen is simple. Paint, Paint Paint. Stop only for the
occasional
breath and a sandwich. With this intense focus I have amassed
a body of work which explores the cherry blossoms
found in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Cherries, for color, cherries
with people, cherries against the sky, cherries while walking,
cherries resting, cherries visiting the sick. Cherries playing
ball. Close up. Distant views. I look at them every which
way. I rely on watercolor as it allows me to work fluidly
and quickly and relates to my earliest exposure to art… the
study of calligraphy. Colored by the memory of this first pure
exposure to painting I strive after an essence, pure expression
of the joy of spring and these special temporary visitors. It
is a two week love affair.
These
many sketches/studies allow me to continue to explore
in the studio later in the year, in hopes to inspire works
with
the same immediacy and purity of emotion.
|
