I love to draw, paint, spill, print, collage, resist, play with visual media. I like to explore trying things that I have never done before and combining unfamiliar media and methods with media I have at one time mastered. In my studio I spend hours and days playing this way. I am sometimes surprised when the products I have made intuitively and in a way that seems very process driven end up reminding me of something that has been concerning me or that I have found especially interesting to look at, listen to.

I work to music. Classical mostly but also Jazz and alternative, mood dependent.

The body of paintings on paper and board made from fall 2020 until summer 2021 was inspired at first by a call for art from another artist friend who was starting a project to commemorate those who have died of Covid 19. 1000 marks on paper size 22x30 inches was what was suggested but the media could be anything. The project’s goal was to get one mark made for every person who had died from this disease. The artist who created the project, called friends and they in turn passed the word around. It was posted on social media. If enough artists worked on this project, each person’s death would be recognized and so honored. Work as it was submitted was posted on a designated Instagram page and eventually would physically come together for a large exhibition.

I made my first 1000 marks on a six inch circular piece of handmade paper, and then made others, layering the acrylics, inks, gesso that was in my studio, removing parts of each layer with resists. I soon felt that I wanted to say more. If I were making work about people who had died, I needed to use names. If I were making work about the time of the pandemic and the serious social change happening, I needed to make note of it. I started to add words as marks to some of the pieces, using silkscreen and cyanotype. I simultaneously started a group of woodcuts (I am a printmaker), but they didn’t seem too related until my colored paintings started looking like gardens and forest environments and I became more conscious about making marks in the woodcuts.

As I always do, I began experimenting with media new to me. Handmade papers, boards, various colored gessoes, shellac inks, gouache, iridescent watercolor were what I had and bought more of. I tried complex color and media combinations, resists and various kinds, sizes and shapes of substrates. After my second vaccination, I traveled to visit family I had not seen so I kept things small and portable. At the same time I noticed and noted new words and phrases, relating to the intense political and social change occurring during the pandemic months. There was new language that I and everyone else was using...I made lists of the new vocabulary and made cyanotype negatives and positives with these words on them for silk screens to add to the other mark making media I was using. I noted changes that were happening in my own personal life. My children were getting married, having children, some living with us during these months, some moving to new neighborhoods. It all weighed in as a part of this historic time. I found the work calming, a serious respite from the anxious, masked trips to the grocery store and the zoom meetings that were never satisfying, Making this work provided me its own respite and satisfaction during this time.