Headlands Center for the Arts

Artist Statement

Basically a painter, in recent years my desire has been to approach abstraction in a fresh way. My production has expanded to include extemporaneous work, created directly on/off walls and floors using materials sourced from the everyday environment. Easily accessible, somewhat ephemeral and basic, this approach offers a multidimensional edge to what’s possible for my composite objects. For the oversized work, there definitely is a relationship to my own body, my reach, height, arm span, etc. And while the work includes a range of formal, sometimes minimal structures, it can occasionally surprise me with its suggestiveness; something about the folding, pleating, and cutting, can recall intimate experience of “skin”… like the crease and wrinkle of forms as they bend into intimate corners of the human body. I think because we are live sensual human beings, Eros, the positive principle of creation is always somehow in play—at least metaphorically.

While at Headlands

My main goal at Headlands is to develop a series of small to mid-sized permanent works on/of paper and mixed media for upcoming exhibitions. These more intimate works will exist alongside my somewhat transitory site-specific wall/floor/room installations. While the main attraction of the residency for me is the possibility to refocus and concentrate for a limited time away from external constraints, the experience of working in such a circumscribed situation presents a range of creative directions along with any possible limitations. Bound, yet amplified, by an environment unfamiliar to me almost ensures that I’ll let “something else” into what I do. And that is all good for my project. I greatly look forward to that aesthetic surprise and complication.