 | |
 |
 Color continues to be the focus in my work because of the direct visceral impact it has on me.
Color triggers memory and can describe time, feeling and light. My interest lies in capturing those feelings. The shapes, forms, and composition serve as a vehicle for the color. This new body of work reflects an acceptance of a simpler geometry as well as three-dimensional form. It is an extension of my earlier abstractions that were of a more organic geometry based on observation.
This change of composition began with the use of a new medium - egg tempera. I was particularly struck by the vibrant colors, waxy surface, and vitality of this antique painting method. I began experimenting with it at first on paper and later on wood. Suddenly I was working with a new medium and on a smaller scale. I decided to simplify the compositions in order to let the egg tempera show me where to go.
I was reminded of an exercise that I have used with beginning drawing students on how to draw a freehand circle using a dissected square as a guide. This is similar to a development I have witnessed in young children's drawings where they draw a cross and then connect the outside tips of the lines to make a circle. This was the start of my investigations with making circles in squares and many variations on this theme in egg tempera.
While I was gathering wood scraps from a local furniture maker, I found an assortment of shaped wood pieces and began collecting those as well. Eventually I started playing with these forms and assembled them, as pieces in their own right. They are an extension of the paintings by virtue of their solid basis in geometry and use of color. October, 2002
Addendum, May 2003 While both the appearance and the media of the work have changed over the past three or four years, the process has maintained a similar thread. Unconsciously I reflect that which I see around me on a regular basis such as a rain chain, tomato cages, horticultural photographs, and a large tree trunk outside the studio. In this vein, my work as both a child art teacher and drawing instructor in the College of Environmental Design at U.C. Berkeley has obliquely influenced what I do in the studio. The stacks and boxes of wood that I collect and which surround me in the studio, very naturally become three-dimensional assemblages. In that way, I allow chance to be an important character in the work. Both the actual process of painting and the discovery made possible by chance nourishes me.
|
|
|