In my work I relay personal experience by using imagery, areas of painted color, and text. Combining recognizable elements with nondescript shapes or poetic word combinations allows the disparate parts to strengthen one another and raise visual questions. These questions form connections between art and experience, such as, the dichotomy between human hardship and an expression of hope. Or recognizing the sense of human frailty and uncertainty among ideas of permanence. Drawing with humble materials of graphite, watercolor, and pinholes, reflects the austere beauty of these concepts.
Works on Paper
Paintings
Pinhole
The pinhole method is one I have been employing since around 2000 and one I use on it's own or combined with other media. While researching Australian Aboriginal art during graduate school I was inspired by their use of dots. By poking holes through paper, I translated those dots and understood I had found a new way to communicate, in my voice. There is an austere and delicate beauty in making a pattern, image, or text with a subtractive process. It has been said my "works marry fierce and fragile through the exquisite and obsessive technique of pin-pricked imagery."
Pinhole relates to drawing and also fiber work. The repetitive process of poking one hole after another is like the accumulative gestures found in sewing, stitching or weaving. A friend of mine one remarked that he found my work to be "like sewing without thread". My mother was a weaver for many years and my grandmother embroidered. My pinhole process recalls those traditions.
