|
Beginning when I was seven, I became a tree climber.
I felt most deeply held when I was precariously balanced in the
branches of a birch, pine, cedar, walnut, filbert, quince or apple
tree. Up in the canopy, smelling the bark, glimpsing the sky and
earth through fluttering leaves and poised against the pull of
gravity, I sensed that I was part of something intimate, vast,
beautiful and unpredictable. I felt like I'd been claimed by something
much greater than me, mapped into a wild belonging. The colors
and patterns of the floral world populated my youthful drawings
and paintings as naturally as breathing. As a lifelong painter,
seeing, like painting, has always been relational and situational,
altering not only what I see, but also how I see myself. In my
image-making process with paint and other materials, I make and
unmake patterns to find an essential relational rightness. Basic
forms and marks trade places in grids or panels to map a new kind
of sense of the world, of me, of us.
|