The Feeling Throat
This image depicts that feeling in your throat when you learn something incredibly hard about someone you love. That feeling of detachment from reality as your emotions and your mind try to make sense of the unthinkable.
56″ x 61″ Sewing Pattern Papers, Fabric, Thread, Toole, and Ink
Painting in situ
Work in Situ
Untitled 3 “Breath”
Lithographers Crayon, Ink, Thread and Fabric on Sewing Pattern Paper 65″ x 54″
In between this piece and another, I was agitated while having to consider the “Male Gaze” in my work. As a figure artist who works with female nudes based on self-portraits I was perplexed once again by having to consider the work to be sexualized when that was not the intention. So I cut the breasts off one piece, and sewed them up onto the figures chest, so as to keep them my own, essentially wrapping them in on themselves and holding them close to my body. I decide to expand on that idea with this piece. As this process leads to a gaping hole in the chest of the body, I felt the need to fill it with something else. The filmy fabric that now pours through the chest gave a beautiful feeling of exhaling, as if it was a breath caught and stuck for years, finally released. This piece speaks of memory as well, and how thinking back to younger years in a mature body changes the memory. By taking out the gatekeeper of sexuality it allows emotion to spill out, and reveals a more innocent memory. I drew the face, and decided it was wrong. Cut out a new piece of pattern paper, redrew the face. Because of the transparency of the pattern paper, the other face was still visible. I cut the fabric and then used ink to make one more layer of face. It creates a visual feeling of unclear vision, fuzziness and a need for focusing on the act of looking. The fabric with the ink produces a feeling of depth which contrasts with the flatness of the drawing which I find enjoyable, as it works to suggest viewing a memory in my mind.
Untitled 2
Lithographers Crayon, Ink, Straight Pins, Thread and Sewing Pattern Paper 64″ x 54″
A resting figure can seem to be vulnerable, but many of us have developed defenses that do not evaporate during exposure. Few of us have managed a life without trauma or strife. Universally, our bodies have ways of reacting to and surviving damage, emotional and physical. This piece speaks to the feeling of the sharpness of unseen scars, that which lies just beneath the surface always. Not only holding one together, but a defense against anyone that attempts to console. It is about how we are alone with ourselves and our unique memories of life experiences. How we create distractions so we can lay quiet, that comfort is something we look for outside of ourselves. These distractions can be cozy and pretty, but they keep us from seeing clearly.
Untitled 1
Lithographers Crayon, Graphite, Ink and thread on Sewing Pattern Paper 57″ x 49″
After scribbling away on upholstery patterns for a while, I began to notice that I always return to the figure. As abstract as I thought the drawings were, I would find something figurative and pull it out of the drawing. Sometimes when I fall asleep at night, images can find their way into my mind. This image of a female figure hugging her knees and looking up and out felt like it needed to be expressed in my work. I did not have any large sewing patterns, having accidentally picked up patterns that had already been cut up. I decided to sew them together, enjoying the idea of stitching something back to being a usable thing. In a way, how we stitch pieces of our lives together, to make it look in a way it was originally not. We embellish our mistakes, we recreate our view, we build and make stronger from pieces that were rearranged and dissembled. By sewing the pieces together, I made the fragile pattern paper stronger, and recreated it into a free form shape, not incumbent upon four straight sides. The freedom from the constrained square or rectangle gives it a subtle power, while maintaining its fragility. For life is fragile, and our memories even more delicate. It’s about rebuilding ourselves, and she is not ashamed, she is assured.
Kinetic Drawing 1
The back panel of this piece was the first drawing I made with the patterns I found from my box of memorabilia that has traveled with me from home to home. I was in a frame of mind of remembering my childhood home, and the patterns reminded me of my Mom and her upholstery business she started. She worked in the basement, but when furniture pieces were too large, she would work in my bedroom. I would have to wear shoes all the time so as to not step on tacks or staples that tended to bounce around the carpet. The furniture so large that it was hard to move around my room. But some days my Mom would be working away as I fell asleep in my four poster bed, the bed she was so proud of finding for me in a garage sale. In that house, we had a tree in the front yard that was massive, and was always a concern during big storms, that it would fall on the house. But we loved that tree. Beautiful and ominous at the same time. The second panel consists of my four poster bed, and birds flying. The place where dreams lie. There are eyes on the bed, always watchful. The top panel is a figure that I have tried to de-sexualize by folding up the breasts, to try to abolish the male gaze on a female figure that speaks of memory, not meant to be sexualized. This piece speaks to memories attempting to be found as an adult trying to make sense of the convoluted past. The opening of the chest allows for the memories to be seen.
This piece is activated by a sensor. The act of an individual activating the piece is significant. Memories are not concrete, and sometimes they are tripped by someone else, even a complete stranger. I wanted the audience to feel a sense of participation, by just the act of doing their own actions. They may strategically approach the piece, or they may be caught off guard at its activation. Either way works. The movements themselves speak to the notion that memory is fleeting, not whole. They move and are hard to see. They turn on and off by themselves sometimes.
This piece also marks the first collaboration between me and my husband. I have been lucky enough to have a partner who has the capabilities to create mechanisms for my ideas. His mechanical engineering of this piece and his design of it were imperative to the fully conceived outcome of the piece. My gratitude and admiration for his abilities are immeasurable.
Mini 2
The Mini series are just small self-portraits. Fun, sad, angry…. you decide.
Paper Mounted on Panel Oil and Ink 14″ x 14″
Isn’t It Funny
I named this piece “Isn’t it funny” because the inspiration for the piece came from looking at an old text book on society written in the fifties. I thought it would be “funny” in a cool way to have the images from that time be juxtaposed with one of my angry feminist women. I used an old looking map and as I pasted them down to the board, all the pages serendipitously fit perfectly around, no need for cutting, and no need for searching for more images, and not throwing any to the side. I understand the link this punching figure represents to the prim and proper photos and illustrations of women getting ready for marriage, gossiping women and cheerleaders and daydreaming female students, and a painting monkey, but I do not wish to concretely make a statement about how those images and my figure relate. This piece comes from an inner dialogue between my conscious and subconscious. This piece, as with most of my pieces are a mirror for myself from my subconscious. I like the energy my female figure brings to these old pages. The color around her I created while dancing around her, slamming at the panel on the floor, dripping and pouring and hitting and dragging and scratching at the surface. The end result is a map of an emotion being expelled.
Paper and Collage mounted on Panel Oil, Ink, Lithographers Crayon, and Pure Pigment 48″ x 42″
We’re all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it’s tea or nothing Cassandra Clare
Another addition to my “Tea in the Parlor” series. I had a remarkable time with this painting, I feel like it is a break through for me, as if I have finally freed myself of pre-conceived notions and I am painting with my heart for the first time in years. The drawing in the background of the spore like shapes really brought out a sense of play and movement.
40 ” x 40″ Oil on canvas
42″ x 42″ with Custom Black Wood Frame
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The Religion of Art and Life
This is the second piece in my “Enter the Parlor” Series. I am just having lots of fun painting pretty flowers. I am trying to push the looseness of my hand and trying to use oil paints like gouache.
30″ x 30″ Oil on canvas 32″ x 32″ With Custom Black Wood Black Frame
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Tea in the Parlor
Playful tea roses. Ah, just a sigh of sweetness. maybe it is to counterbalance the strife from my refugee series, but I take pure delight in these whimsical roses, which I can see over- seeing a tea party in the parlor.
30″ x 30″ Oil on canvas
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Know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment-Muriel Barbery
This beautiful little lady is all about the way shadow and light meet on a n object. I wanted to keep the airiness and suppleness on the petals. This feels like a thought, the background sketching are brain cells, and this flower blooms within their web.
30″ x 30″ Oil on canvas
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Thought Process
When you picture an object in your mind, how do you SEE it? I ask lots of people to describe the experience that they have when visualizing something in their heads. Some see it two-dimensionaly; some see only descriptive words, some see three dimensions and minute detail, some see only in black and white. I am fascinated at how people see their thoughts. Some see them outside their head, some feel they are in their skulls.
Oil on canvas 30″ x 30″
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Eternity itself transcending time and space- DT Suzuki
This piece is a bit of a departure for me, as I am allowing myself to listen to the paintings. Normally I would prefer a tighter control on the image, but I am trying to let the images come organically from each individual piece. I have always had a fascination with the brain and brain cells, and how it all works. This bloom is like a thought, formed by the dendrites surrounding it. It is ephemeral and not contained to our reality. It’s petals separate thoughts, taking wing in the mind.
Oil on canvas 30″ x 30″
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Find yourself a cup; the teapot is behind you, Now tell me about hundreds of things
The third in my “Tea in the Parlor” Series. Just at throwback to beautiful roses and the celebration of nature’s beauty. The title is a quote from H.H.Munro under the pseudonym as of Saki
29″ x 30″ Oil on canvas 31″ x 32″ With Custom Black wood Frame
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Bursting Flower
The morning I created this piece was a glorious first Spring like day after the winter. Spring light had finally managed to find it’s way through the grey winter. It felt as if the ground was ready to pop. I wanted to burst! So I allowed myself to just play with color and brushes, and this is what emerged.
Gouache on paper 18″ x 24″
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Axiom of War
Part of my series on the Refugees in Europe. This continues my new relationship with negative space. So many images swarm the headlines, to sit and study just one can tell so much more.
Painting: Gouache on Paper. 30″ x 22″
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Portrait of a Syrian Family
The images that trickle in to our news feeds have really touched my heart. This is the beginning piece in a new series about the Refugees struggle through the lens of photo journalists.
Painting: Gouache on Paper. 30″ x 22″
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Open the Door
Continuing in my series on Refugees. This image was taken from a photo journalist at a scene where Refugees were being tear gassed as they tried to cross a border in Europe. The more involved I get with the series, I am finding the crowds very interesting. As I picked my way through the image, I realized that a lot of the crowd were photo journalists documenting the incident, it became hard to discern who was who in the crowd.
I took a chance and placed water on the image of the man after I had completed him, the blurred watermark around him feels like the crowd that was propping him up.
Painting: Gouache on Paper. 22″ x 30″
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