Artist Statement 2025

I was five when drawing and painting became my first holy communion, and my religion.

The examiner of my first-grade readiness test reported that I “drew a spontaneous fine likeness of (her) earring,” among other distractions. I still remember my first lesson with a local fine artist. My mother framed my first painting, preserving my first stroke on the newsprint paper with an over-loaded brush.

As a Colorist, I paint what I cannot photograph, translating external/internal complexities into unpremeditated layers of colors on canvas, paper, wood or cardboard.

Be my subjects flesh, land, water, air, desires or abstractions, viewers and collectors most frequently speak of the spirit of the work. This universal connection makes my art priceless to me.

Color inspires my compositions; it drives their energy, movement and depth. Oil stick, tube or pastel color shapes and textures on paper and canvas render social, political and cultural issues, portraits of human nature and existence.

Each work is unpremeditated and begins with doodles dictated by my heart and spirit in streams of consciousness, where self-awareness disappears in solitary acts of creation.

The first three colors are random selections that usually dictate the palette. Each new layer of color urges evolution, until one subject dominates the whole, exciting me with its unexpected presence and the challenge of its development.

What influences my work goes beyond art school and art history courses to current events and the rhythms of Mahler or Dylan or McFerrin. Unintentional cominglings of colors sometimes change the work's direction.

Art museum and gallery travels across America, Europe and Russia connect me to past and present art worlds.

As some artists have in every era, my art advocates for justice, raising awareness of society's ills and how to achieve spiritual freedom that art and education create. These are the priceless components of my passion to paint.