Artist’s Statement
As I return to full-time painting and other art forms after 22 years of administrative arts work, I have enjoyed working in quite a small format—five by seven inches watercolors on very roughly-textured, cold-pressed paper.
I’ve enjoyed starting freely with color and brush, with no visual idea or image in mind, just letting the brush and strokes of color lead me. I’ve loved the open-ended improvisation of this approach.
I should add that the great Paul Klee has been a profound influence on me this year.
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” is the way Dylan Thomas put it. The surging, spinning forces of life intensity as the wonderful seasons of spring and summer develop—these are the energies that appeared as I painted.
The robed figures are from a 17th-century crèche I worked on once, and all the figures are part of the sweet, irrationality of the seated figure’s dream, where Christ, madness, shamanic magic, and universal energies spill over the sleeper whose passivity belies his active internal imagination.
Life can actually be a maze where finding oneself is a great difficulty. If we can, we stand still and try to decide which path to take. Any path can be the right one, because it’s not the path, it’s what we do with it.