Not all art is pretty...


Are you are the person who selects art to match your decor? Great!  Many of my pieces are bold, vibrant, and colorful!  If you admire or acquire art because of the symbology, you might hesitate when you glance at my alcohol inks because they aren't representational. You might struggle to name or describe a painting, to categorize or define it.  That's okay, that's what we all do to make sense of our environment, the world around us, including art. 

I'll let you in on a secret which may explode some myths, so don't be too upset:  I don't know what it is I am painting until I am done. I don't have a spirit that takes over, automatically painting through me. Rather, I choose the colors and techniques to use but I have very little control, mostly just responses, to the process. When I get a result I like, I must be extremely careful and judicious what to add, subtract or expand upon because, due to the extreme reactivity of the medium, I most likely will mess up or never be able to replicate what I have just done. What I consider "skill" is 'curatorial', deciding what to keep, what to tweak, what to manipulate and what to set aside.  

Searching for a way to express my anguish over the tragedy of the brutal death of George Floyd and to process the fear that grips me when I think of my four black grandsons and how vulnerable they are to racial profiling and abuses of power by police, I selected bold, stark colors, resulting in experimentation in puddles of intense hues which flowed into and around one another.  Not realizing what was happening as I was working on it, I gasped when I saw pain and suffering, fear and loss, past and present. 

Art is a language without words, beating a tempo and signifying emotion.  There is something visceral and raw here. Do you see the fear? Can you glimpse the pain? Not all art should be pretty; many songs are sad. 

Searing Loss

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