One of my ongoing fascinations is with wind. Growing up in Tennessee, I was fascinated with the way I could track a gust of wind through the tree-canopies overhead, just by listening. I could see those trees swaying 10 feet or more in one direction or another…but I could also hear the wood. Trees that big creak and moan when they bend.
Though my artworks have taken many turns, stylistically and in media, the wild weather I experienced under those tree canopies has always informed my work. I think more broadly now, considering my adopted Southern Californian landscape and climate while looking at the larger global climate-influenced landscapes I see virtually.
In the last year I started looking at dust devils and up-drafts. They are a real-time indicator of global warming. They occur when the ground is hotter than the air around it. It can cause a real-time funnel, pulling air up, rather than dropping down from the clouds like a tornado. The hotter the planet gets, the bigger the dust devils and updrafts.
2024, Acrylic on panel, 48 x 48 inches
Installation view
2023, Acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches
Private collection
2023, Acrylic on panel, 36 x 36 inches
2023, Acrylic on panel, 12x 12 inches
2023, Acrylic on panel, 20 x 20 inches
2023, Acrylic on panel, 20 x 20 inches
Private collection
2023, Acrylic on panel, 36 x 36 inches
Private collection
2023, Acrylic on panel, 20 x 20 inches
Private collection
2023, Acrylic on panel, 10 x 10 inches
Private collection
2023, Acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 inches
Private collection
These small studies are based on photographs and videos of updrafts and dust devils. They are my way of rolling around ideas before I make larger, more complicated works. Small works are done in a variety of ways. They involve splatters of paint, copies, transparencies, graphite, white-out tape, and an abundance of strapping, electrical, masking tape on velum and typing, rag, and tracing papers.
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2024, Acrylic on panel, 8 x 8 inches
2023, Acrylic on watercolor paper, 20 x 36 inches
2023, Acrylic on watercolor paper, 20 x 36 inches
2023, Acrylic on watercolor paper, 20 x 36 inches
2023, Acrylic on watercolor paper, 20 x 36 inches
2023, Acrylic on watercolor paper, 20 x 36 inches
I am fascinated by the pregnant moment of shift and change when events suddenly stop being the same and become in flux. In my paintings, I work with imagery inversion, flipping horizontal and vertical imagery and process to capture a pause in momentum, working toward a sense of simultaneous uncertainty verging on collapse and stability.
There is a pregnant gap bridging any two states- from rest to action and from contemplation to completion. Between is an ongoing series of works acting as a study of this gap. These process heavy works are focused on concluding as disoriented, dissonant and unfixed.
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 36 x 36 inches
Private collection
2015, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 36 x 36 inches
2015, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 36 x 36 inches
Private collection
2015, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 36 x 36 inches
Private collection
2016, Acrylic on mahagany panel, 24 x 24 inches
Private collection
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 24 x 24 inches
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 24 x 24 inches
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 24 x 24 inches
Private collection
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 12 x 12 inches
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 12 x 12 inches
Private collection
2016, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 12 x 12 inches
Private collection
2017, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 12 x 12 inches
Private collection
2017, Acrylic on mahogany panel, 12 x 12 inches
Private collection
The Primal Elements individually, and as a grouping, shaped these works. Though abstracted, each work nods to an element through color, application, and imagery. Earth: mostly neutral colors clashing with the neons found nature. Air: Slashed line-work pushing forward, cool colors branching out from the core of paintings, pulsing wind. Fire: Heated colors and jagged line work are paired to speak of the unexpected intensity of a roasting warmth. Water: Iridescence acrylic pours flood and spill over the works, ebbing or flowing. Each work is built with reverence to the nature.
2019, Oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches
2019, Oil on panel, 36 x 36 inches
2019, Oil on 2 panels, 48 x 48 inches total
Private collection
2019, Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
2018, Acrylic on panel, 60 x 48 inches
2019, Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches
2019, Oil on panel, 36 x 48 inches
2018, Acrylic on 2 panels, 60 x 96 inches total
2019, Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches
Inspired by a fly-over from Baltimore to Los Angeles, this series reflects the lush diversity of an expansive continent: seasonal flooding, fresh-plowed agricultural gridding, meandering switchback creeks and the urban sprawl inching across the horizons-highlighted by rolling afternoon shadows, creeping toward sunset.
Acrylic on mahogany panel, 6 x 6 inches
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
Private collection
A rare and unexpected blizzard pushed through the Donner Summit in my home state of California on March 1, 2024. Screening of real-time news footage of the I-80 closure, and inevitable logjam of stalled vehicles, was complimented by storm-chaser video of near white-out conditions off-road at the summit. The sheer blinding force of this phenomena lead to this consideration of nature's overwhelming power to completely stop modern movement.
Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 14 x 14 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 inches
Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 inches
This dual suite of wood cut prints are of deep forest, tangled and thriving. Anticipating Spring, the works pivot from frost-bitten brushwood to budding branches, reaching outward and upward, intertwining, and tangling. I think of these works as linked to the fable Sleeping Beauty. As the princess and her town slept, a thicket grew up around their kingdom. Deep and forbidding, it protected and hid them all from the world until it was time for the princess to be woken up- “coming into life again like April.” *
Thicket printing plates are made from planed beach lumber harvested from a back county forest and were inspired and carved on sight, in the same thick, tangled, and overturned woodland, in frosted winter. They are printed on cold-press magnolia paper and pressed at Coastline College.
With a nod to the deceptively simple and spontaneous movements of sumi-e painting, the printing plates are the reality of bare form: the literal branches from the same woodland sight were collected in Spring. The pruned collection of budding green beach limbs was then pressed, cured, sanded, carved, and mounted for printing. Like April works are printed on Arches and Strathmore, and are hand pressed using a steel spoon. Each has a limited palette of black, white, silver, and pewter water-based inks used to create the value spectrum in the works.
All of these works are single-editions. Each work is created from one or several of the suite of two dozen print plates created for this project.
Woodcut print with black, white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Arches paper, 48 x 96 inches
Woodcut print with white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Strathmore black paper, 36 x 48 inches
Woodcut print with white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Strathmore black paper, 36 x 48 inches
Woodcut print with white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Strathmore black paper, 36 x 48 inches
Woodcut print with black, white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Strathmore white paper, 24 x 36 inches
Woodcut print with black, white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Strathmore white paper, 24 x 36 inches
Woodcut print with black, white, silver & pewter water-based inks on Strathmore white paper, 24 x 36 inches
Wanderings at dusk through a frosty-wintered forest offered the imagery for these mixed media collages that pair wood block prints with altered photographic imagery.
These works are available at K. IMPERIAL FINE ART, San Francisco, CA.
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 11 3/4 x 16 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 11 3/4 x 15 3/4 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 16 x 11 3/4 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 14 1/2 x 11 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 11 3/4 x 16 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 15 3/4 x 12 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 15 3/4 x 12 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 15 3/4 x 11 3/4 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 12 x 16 inches
Woodcut print and collage on paper, 16 1/4 x 12 inches
These works are available at SCAPE, Corona Del Mar, CA.
Water-based monoprint, 15 1/2 x 27 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 21 1/2 x 31 inches
Water-based monoprint, 31 x 21 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 31 x 21 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 27 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 27 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 27 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 27 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 26 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches
Water-based monoprint, 27 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches