| drawings | woodcuts | digital | about the art |
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About the ArtworkMy artwork seems to usually incorporate several different levels of expression. There is the purely visual, the emotional, the symbolic that references the spiritual dimension of life and often a strong verbal-poetic counterpoint that is creating itself in my mind simultaneous with the physical creative processes of the images.The visual aspect of my work comes into being at the intersection where the pleasure of looking at the world meets in my mind with the pleasure of translating those elements from the natural world into marks on a sheet of paper. I am particularly attracted by trees and birds, as well as their leaves, branches, wings, and feathers. You'll also find chairs in my work a lot. I like how they look, and they are also symbolic references to people. And I love the human figure— particularly faces, hands, feet. But layered over, under, and within the seeing and creation of images, meanings attach themselves, germinating. Dancers and birds express joy, glee, or longing. Images may begin to carry feelings of tranquility, or contemplation; or of sorrow. Sometimes the image starts with an emotion which gathers visual forms around it; at other times the images come first and then as I work, the feelings emerge from the forms as I work on them. The spiritual dimension of my work, like the emotional, sometimes is the initial thought for a work and at other times it seems to surface out of the working process, or even attach itself after the piece is completed. The images may arise from my conscious mind already associated with some meaning; or thoughts and associations may filter up through my unconscious into the work and the conscious mind then sees meaning in what I created. The verbal acompanyment finds its expression often in the titles of the work. However, since a title is very short, the thoughts have to be condensed, abridged, extremely summarized. Sometimes the words work themselves into poems, that may take a different turn or direction from the visual images. Sometimes, as in this website, I will write about thoughts that have gone into and come out of the images for me. However, the verbal component constitutes an alternative medium for expression and not an interpretation or statement of the "meaning" of a visual image. I experiece my images and my words as open loose intimations rather than labels on containers. They usher you into a landscape, not into a room. I therefore fully expect the viewer of the images and the reader of the words to bring their own meanings to bear and to find their own references and connections in the work. I will hopefully be adding, when I have the time, a comments option for the pages with the images so you can speak back to the work. |
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