artist's statement....

I decided to re-work my artist's statement. Here it is:

Sometimes I begin a painting with a remembered image – a vineyard near Sonoma, for instance. But the image does not remain carefully outlined and static. As we stand in a landscape, or walk through it, the scene changes: light shimmers, the direction of our gaze shifts, we move, clouds move, the wind blows the mustard flowers. The focal point, the light, the color, the forms all change. Even paintings that began with an imagined setting, such as “Dreaming of A Studio in Tunisia,” demonstrate these same changes, along with uncertainty and desire. Remembering and imagining involve both what is lost and what can be recovered.

This is one of my recent monotypes that we framed, "Light Returns to Melleran."  It is based on my memory of people gathering in the small villages after the big storm of December 1999 (see the journal entry, below).  I love the deep colors of the etching inks... they reward looking, walking away, looking back.