The Process.

 When I paint, I am looking for an expressive starting point, such as a particular gesture with a loaded brush, a color which opens up an opportunity for a dialogue to take place. A brush stroke that demands a response, physical at times or emotional. A particular color that triggers a feeling, and so an architecture of responses emerges. A building of strokes, rubbings, scratches, smears, geometric markings, contrasts of dark, light, still surfaces and dramatic gestures. The interplay of space and flatness, the energy between colors, my mood, the way I hold the brush and the energy flowing through my arm as I do so. The viscosity and resistance of the paint and the different way the materials interact.

This is why I paint. I try to not control but go with the flow. Accidents occur and they become gifts, spurring my imagination and propelling the painting towards its final form. The drama playing out on the surface is the focus of the painting. The gesture is the theme, the swirl of the oil paint under the layer of ink, its materiality, textual, curdling, dissipating, breaking up, bleeding into a freshly applied gouache, generating an unexpected texture. Whatever lands on the, "page," doesn't so much tell a story but actually is the story. Thus something emerges I've not seen or known before, pre-intellectual, a visual surprise, a feeling ultimately contained by a picture frame. 

 

 Painting is my go-to ritual. Messy, alive, giving form to a coded message from my unconscious. A visible document of the creative process. An unearthed memory, a glimpse into my soul.