STATEMENT

The simple, sinuous shapes in my new work developed as I explored monotype for the first time in a workshop with Michael Mazur at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown during the summer of 2004. These grass-like shapes came to me-sprouted spontaneously-as I explored this new medium, and they became the catalyst for an entirely new series of collage paintings. After having worked for many years with mostly rectangular compositions and recognizable papers and found objects, I was compelled to move into a more open and curvilinear composition.

I cut out these blade-shaped pieces of paper freehand, one by one, and glue them down on linen, building a composition blade by blade, allowing each collaged element to follow its own individual path-reaching and meandering across the surface of the canvas. I look to create a particular sense of movement, thinking about whatever unseen forces might be at work in the composition as it slowly takes shape, just as one might imagine wind or an underwater current as an unseen force giving unifying form to the seemingly random elements in the natural world. There is also a gradual unfolding in the process of developing and heightening the color relationships, as I seek to push the painted areas so they both unite and separate the blades.

There is an exhilarating sense of freedom in working with these curvilinear shapes, inspired by nature but moving far beyond into pure abstraction. The process allows an infinite array of possibilities to evolve into new compositions and colors.