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I trained as a painter, but at some point I began to realize that my art would have to involve something more than putting paint to canvas. I craved more immediate interaction with the world and I knew I wanted that interaction to be part of my work. I wanted to involve not just brush and canvas, but arms and hands, legs and feet…my whole body. I wanted my art to be part of my life, but at the same time I wanted my life to be part of my art.
Central to my work are the marks that I make out in the world. Whether I am moving about on snow, through mudflats, or scratching away ice with fingernails, the traces that describe where I was, what I did--- these imprints, this primal contact with the world, is what informs my work. For me, these activities allude to and affirm the mysterious life we humans lead.
I make my paintings using a form of distemper, a process developed during the 14th century for painting on panel and later used by many Impressionists in painting on paper. Distemper is a glue and pigment medium which yields a surface that is very translucent, almost x-ray like. The medium allows me to apply and alter marks, add new marks or make old marks reappear. The result is a space that is both deep and flat and most of all ambiguous; it is difficult to discern the order in which marks were applied yet it all comes together looking seamless. I like the strange, mysterious space I can create with distemper.
I begin by venturing into environments like mud and snow or working on iced or wet windowpane surfaces. It is these marks, these environmental "drawings" that I use as studies for my paintings. I stop, photograph them, and bring the photographs back to my studio where I combine them on paper or board with hand made marks. At this point I am primarily playing with scale, trying to reconcile real terrain with the smaller photograph, and with the smaller painting surface.
The pigments I use to express my experiences don't correspond, necessarily, to the time and place in which I made the trek or even to the photograph of it. Instead, the colors are my own response to the experience; it's on some emotional, as well as physical level that I try to reconstruct, or better, reconnect, with that event.