A Stroke of...

Along my walk to the studio is an abandoned lot overgrown with weeds which enchant me with their persistence in the face of disregard and the grace and elegance in the simple shape of their leaves. These growths are a repeated icon in my recent body of paintings as an embodiment of the power to transform a mundane experience into the remarkable. The plants become different sized stencils, repeated in full or fragment and used as both positive and negative shapes. I build thin coats of paint over and around the stencils, often using a compressor to spray the paint for an atmospheric, barely-there quality. Rendered in shades of blue with explosions of magenta and yellow, layers of large, leaf-like shapes and blocks of color float above and below grids. The plant forms and the grid lines are the primary tools and represent two opposing systems, the organic and the imposed. They push and pull against each other emerging and dissipating all at once with no clear preference to one and no clear distinction between the positive and negative space. I work responsively, reacting as I make and leaving graphite and ink lines as visible trains of thought. The paintings remain visually open and reflect a gestural, provisional impression.

The works are indebted to Minimalism for its frugality of means and its attention to process, and the journey of making is equally important to me: ultimately the work transcends the original object and sketch and becomes a record of the making, an accumulation of traces and residue of both plant and grid. Each painting is a discreet life, slowly built up through different phases, an appreciation that the profound experience of life is a cumulative experience built from everyday moments.