Left to right: Hideki’s House. Levitation. Heron.
Because I love light, water, color, and space I paint the things that happen when I try to capture them.
I paint water, space, skies, boats, barns to feel the light and shade, to play with the movement, the imaginary spaces, and the paint.
But wonder is what I do best – I marvel at how nature behaves, the playfulness of light and shadow, the astounding colors and movement that appear in the sky, on plants’ and animals’ forms, and in the mind’s eye.
When we’re inspired, we draw in a sharp breath—i.e., inspiration—and the act that follows- –painting in my case—is the ‘expression’, the exhalation. I’m surprised and amazed by everything all the time. It’s exhausting, but it comes from wonder, and wondering about it all, and wanting to ‘make something’ with what I see. Not copying it, or recording it, or narrating anything, but seizing the part that causes my inspiration, and making that part visible.
Critic Cate Mcquaid* called my works “grand painterly abstractions that use recognizable shapes to explore the notion of space and the phantasm of light.” The ‘grand’ is appreciated, and “phantasm of light” is plain gorgeous, but size is at work here, too, often about 5 feet up to 14 or 15 feet–because space, land, water, and nature are all bigger than we are. When we step outdoors, we step into them, they envelop us: they are ‘grand’, as in grandeur.
I work with fast brushwork.
I work series usually, so there are often many on one theme, but the ‘subject matter’ is nearly immaterial to me. It is there for formal reasons, the FORMS, the three dimensionality, line, color, composition, a reason to draw with the brush—all essential components of my work—are all pretexts for painting.
I want to paint light and shadow and land and perspective, water and reflections, creatures with muscles and bones and movement, because they create a clear sense of scale, because the shape of a boat is smooth and crisp and solid, and a horse or bull is vibrant with muscularity and hot with life.
Humans have been building barn-shaped buildings for doghouses and cathedrals for 5,500 years and counting. There’s something there I love to draw and paint. Perspective is a wonderful game I love between the eye and the mind.
On a flat surface I can play in a free- wheeling flight into deep illusionist space, where a Sistine ‘God’ can turn and fly straight away into the blue empyrean. But I’m a child of the mid-twentieth century and came of age in the era of color field painting, when authenticity was in the paint. Sticky colored stuff spread onto cloth on a wooden stretcher, that feels and reads like paint, with substance, texture, and materiality. Not pixels.
I paint objects with three dimensions, like water, skies, boats, horses, and barns, so I can make light and shade, play with movement in imaginary spaces, and paint.
* The Boston Globe, November 18,1999, Cate McQuaid, “Seeing the light on her landscapes, brilliantly”