The Sun Will Come Up
2010
Oil on Wood Panel
24"x36"

Artist Statement Abstract Landscapes Series I believe in chaos theory and that everything from our veins and vessels to the trees and mountains is patterned. I revel in the fact that color can be ephemerally orderly and in pointing that out through abstraction. My working process begins with a limited palette and an image or a memory of a landscape. I later consider the emotions those colors evoke and the way our eyes reinterpret color based on its surroundings. My goal is to create paintings from torn paper collages that reflect a person’s inner harmony or outer environment. Order is invariably present in my work though a piece, or certain areas of it, may seem chaotic. Aside from order, I am drawn to other words and concepts which are often abstract and difficult to define. During a study abroad semester in London of 2002, I was asked to respond to Joseph Campbell’s quote, “standing on a whale fishing for minnows.” I found I do not fish for minnows, but for the whale itself, the source, which to me represents ideals or what Plato would call Forms, such as Love, Truth, Peace, Justice, Beauty, and to which I have decidedly added Color. I love color. Its nuances and philosophical complexities along with its historical and applicable beauty challenge and inspire me. Color is like Truth and Beauty; it is a sensory experience which exists in a realm of ideas. Most importantly, I can use the material form of Color to create minnows, small representations of the Whale, the source. The abstract concepts of order, beauty and color, to name a few, helped me realize that creating abstract art work is as natural for me as thinking abstractly. I am interested in abstraction as a way of seeing the world, a way of thinking, and a way of creating art. “The only thing you have to offer another human being, ever, is your own state of being… everything you do, whether you’re cooking food or doing therapy or being a student or being a lover, you are only doing your own being, you are only manifesting how evolved a conscious you are.” Ram Dass