Showings

Art opening at Persimmon's Gallery - 7/8/11

Persimmons Garden Gallery

Redway, California | website
July 8 – August 31, 2011
Artist Statement

Sustenance

The relationship between winged creatures and flowers is hypnotic. Drifting streams of pollen, attracting insects and mammals for their mutual survival is a sweet and powerful metaphor for how life requires sustenance.

This show is about how life is sustained, in both the seen and unseen and the endless ways it gets expressed.

This show is also about living in the Southwest and its unique environment. Plants such as the saguaro cactus are only found in one region of the world: The Sonoran Desert. The saguaro has adapted to extreme heat and low moisture, which represent a resilience and tolerance I admire. The annual blossoms they produce are pollinated by a flying mammal – a lesser-known long-nosed bat that only feeds at night.

I also find the slot canyons and mountain ranges of Arizona artistically and spiritually inspiring. The shapes are sensuous, elegant, and rugged with sunlight and shadow streaming in to create stunning visuals. Slot canyons, in particular, evoke ancient stories such as Platoʼs allegory of the cave and the shadows cast from flames on the wall. They do not make up reality, but point to a greater reality. When we understand this, we are freed by the illusions of life.

I am drawn to the metaphors in nature. Through painting, I simultaneously understand my internal and external experience. Eventually it all merges, and there is no distinction between inner and outer, the creative act becoming the vehicle that takes me there.