Artist Statement
Plant Forms, Flowforms, and Micro-Forms
Most of my pictures are about the act of looking at things closely, particularly things that are small and intricate. I work in a variety of mediums, combining drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. My watercolor paintings and monotypes are part of an ongoing series of organic form studies that began with objects gathered along the beach one summer. I was interested in the idea that all of this activity at the sea’s edge— the waves and swells and curling breakers, and the flow patterns in the sand and clouds— seemed perfectly expressed in the forms of these objects; as if the curves of shells or the bones of fish were a solidified form of a kind of liquid architecture derived from the movement of water. The cells, pods, and vessel shapes that occur throughout my work are essentially water drop forms, and the curling leaf and petal structures assume the form of flowing liquids. As I studied flowform design, I began to find evidence of fluid structure in just about every natural object I encountered. This led to research involving crystal structures–radiolarians, diatoms, pollen grains, and other microscopic forms–which eventually revealed resemblances to mathematical models.
Drawing and Observation
I have an interest in science and natural history, and I try to approach my subjects in the manner of a naturalist, through research, reading, drawing, and fieldwork. I begin most projects with drawings from observation, following the conventions of natural science illustration, where full chiaroscuro renderings are juxtaposed with schematic diagrams, cross-sections, or detailed enlargements. Sooner or later, however, observational truth is abandoned in the interests of art making, and the image is transformed. Preferring the act of sketching to the production of finished artworks, drawing for me is a means of investigating the structural complexity of objects. It’s also a contemplative process that offers the mental space necessary to patiently observe the intricacies of natural design, texture, and color.
Clouds and Mushrooms
My recent series of prints and sculptures is based on spheres, polyhedrons, and other close packing forms. I became interested in the idea that certain organic structures, soap bubbles, and crystals resembled the forms of Platonic and Archimedean solids. The work in this series is the result of a long-standing visual obsession with an odd-shaped, red-orange mushroom called clathrus. When mature, its structure displays the geometry of a truncated icosahedron. Configurations like clathrus occur in a variety of microscopic forms such as radiolarians, carbon atoms, and viruses. The starting point for this recent series on monotype installations was a photograph by Harold Edgerton of a mushroom cloud from a Los Alamos, NM, testing site. In the first split second of the atomic blast, the photo captures an image of something that looks like clathrus. After seeing this photo, I became intrigued with the idea of attempting to create a structure that was both microcosm and macrocosm, appearing simultaneously huge and ominous, yet infinitesimally small and delicate. It’s interesting to compare the gridded structures of microscopic forms to the architectural framework of towers and tanks in our urban-industrial landscape, and to see that their structural supports are based upon the same principles. In my search for affinities between man-made and natural design, and as I think about about the interaction of nature and culture, I hope to express what is hidden from our eyes, yet ever-present in our thoughts: that our experience of nature co-exists with an awareness of chemical contaminants, disturbed ecosystems, and uncontrollable microbial worlds.
Nature and Industry
I enjoy wandering in woods or along shorelines in search of interesting natural forms to draw or paint. I have lived most of my life in the rural-industrial coalfields of Appalachia, (just a few miles upriver from the infamous slag heaps where director John Hillcoat filmed his post-apocalyptic movie, The Road.) For over two centuries, the landscapes and ecosystems of the Monongahela River Valley have been ravaged by human industry. Here, the last lovely remnants of unspoiled nature are isolated between regions of bleakness and environmental trauma. While the elegance of nature’s designs generate ideas for art-making, it is the melancholy feeling associated with the loss of wild nature that compels me to make art. As an artist living at this particular time and place, I hope to document a small part of this terrain—its charms along with its post-industrial squalor–as well as a few of its rapidly diminishing native species.
Sophie’s Woods Series
My ongoing series of mixed media monotypes is inspired by accounts of extinct birds, such as the Passenger Pigeon and Carolina Parakeet, whose vast populations once thrived within the oak, beech, and chestnut forests of Appalachia. I photographed tree carvings on a wooded hillside above the Monongahela River, in a place called Sophie’s Woods, where the bones of an 18th Century woman lie in an unmarked grave. (Sophia Allegra eloped in 1766 with Albert Gallatin, against her mother’s wishes, and died 5 months later at the age of 23.) In the woods surrounding her grave site, decades of lovers have their carved names in the soft bark of the beech trees. I printed ink transfers of these bark carvings onto watercolor paintings of flowering trees. Then I drew images and collaged fragments from 19th Century natural history prints on the final layers.
Painting, Printmaking, Drawing, Collage, and Assemblage
A good bit of my work ends up as mixed-media monotypes. Painting on prints, and printing upon drawings and watercolors is my usual working method, though I sometimes attach plaster, wire and fabric sculptures to media media works to create installations or assemblages. I use a wide range of nontoxic print processes including relief, intaglio, stencil, transfer, and offset color-viscosity. Matrices are interchangeable, and images move from print to print. Collage elements are layered upon prints, and then painted over. The act of erasure and reprinting, and the residual images produced by many changes, attempt to record a process which suggests the ephemeral quality of natural forms. Vaporous states, transitions from solid to liquid, and the accumulation and dispersion of particles, are impressions I try to convey through manipulations of paint and ink.
Landscape Painting
When I travel away from my studio, I like to paint landscapes outdoors from observation. Unlike my mixed-media work, these paintings are often finished in a few hours. I spend the summer months painting outdoors on Assateague Island, VA, and I sometimes work in the winter from the windows of my house overlooking the the banks of the Monongahela. Observing the effects of light and atmosphere on the landscape is an endless source of inspiration to me as a visual artist. Painting outdoors on location, attempting to capture the effects of wind and weather on water, clouds, and trees, and is always fun and exciting to me, because each time I discover something new about painting. It also offers me the time and mental space to observe the natural world around me carefully, and with patience. Regardless of the results of the day’s work, a day spent painting outdoors is always a day of my life well spent.