Artist's Profile:

My work with encaustic seems like a fusion of many of my past art explorations which included ceramics, papermaking, printmaking, photography and mixed media collage. There is a sensuality of material and a sense of partnership with the medium that is integral to my enjoyment of the process and to the success of any piece. It is tactile, malleable and rich and also allows the delight of using a fragrant byproduct of the interaction of bees with flowers. It feels akin to cooking, creating a surface that often exudes an edible quality. Unpredictable and surprising effects happen frequently and there is a constant interplay between transparency, opacity, layering and subtle dimensionality. By combining drawing and paper with wax the potential of this interplay seems infinitely expanded.

Most of the recent images ( 2008 Gallery 1 and 2009 Gallery) are from a group of artworks I’ve been calling “The String Series.” In this series, delicate line and cursive doodle are used to imply the ever-changing unraveling world, a body individual and global, constantly unmade and remade, transitory and tenuous. Each piece features a hand gesture, which symbolizes the actor, the doer, the energy that effects and takes action on its environment. Together, line and gesture form a visually compelling work, rich with shifting metaphors and compound meaning.

Hopefully, my work, while created to explore my own interests and inner narratives, is broad enough that others are able to draw pleasure and meaning from the images. The world seems to me mysterious, lush and lovely, dangerous, disquieting and complex and we all totter and balance and dance under a strange accretion of emotion and sensation, culture, memories and media. In the making of these objects I endeavor to expose a moment of that mystery and create a sense of both recognition and visual satisfaction.