My work explores, but doesn't resolve, the dualities of figure and ground, certainty and uncertainty. Each piece arises from a feeling of intimacy with a place or person, or often, both. Through a collage-like drawing process, I develop compositions that allow for multiple readings -- absences may shift into presence, and what at first appears steady may slowly become unstable.
To start, I make a simple line drawing, pulling shapes from my own photographs and sketches. Some shapes are composites, others are negative spaces or fragments. The resulting composition is a spatial conundrum, a hybrid of architecture and body.
While I begin the paintings with a plan of the composition, the rest of the process is improvisational. I don't select a color palette ahead of time but instead start with one paint color and the color of the linen, choosing subsequent colors in turn as the painting develops. The exposed linen functions as both support and actor, a neutral field or absence that may become an active shape or presence the longer one looks.
The surface of each painting has a variety of textures. Some areas I stain with watery paint, other shapes I build up to a smooth sanded finish, with both crisp and rough edges. These subtle variations play against the quasi-illusionistic space of the painting. Both / and.
The title of the show, These Days, is taken from Nico's version of the Jackson Browne song. The song is about loss, sadness, and regret. And while my work holds plenty of the first two, it has none of the third, and actually holds a measure of hope, too. But the title feels fitting for a show of these paintings at this time, when we've all been dealing with losses of one kind or another, and uncertainty feels like the only certainty we can rely upon.
