As one of my ceramic “tree forms”, After Rain depicts a skyblue tree acting as the artist’s viewfinder, perfectly framing the sun crested by the arc of a rainbow. Lustered raindrops move freely, suspended from the branches that flank the center, adding a twinkle to the scene of natural beauty that is unfolding. Continuing in a Romantic landscape tradition, my ceramic tree forms especially echo the Rückenfigur, a singular figure situated within the landscape onto which the viewer may project. One of the central subjects, a rainbow, directly depicts the colorful wavelengths that exist within visible light. The addition of the lustered droplets recalls a previous primary inspiration, a prism or water’s ability to refract light, splitting it and scattering it throughout the atmosphere. This connection between light and color, in art and nature, has a somewhat psychedelic, consciousness-raising quality to it, in that greater awareness of color unfolds greater awareness of light, and vice versa. The interconnection of color and light has always felt magical to me. When applied in my work, spectral coloring and sparkling light translates the magical experience of awe, where physical reality intermingles with fantastical and emotional worlds.
After Rain is a ceramic sculpture made in late summer last year, where sun showers created frequent, dramatic rainbows over Portland and South Portland, Maine. It celebrates radiant light and the presence of vibrant color in the natural world. After Rain is one of two sculptures made in tandem with a series of paintings, titled Straight on Til Morning, and shares a focus on bright blues, daylight, and the sun, and imagined or remembered landscapes.
Night of Nights (Sunburst) centers a sun seen through a screen of bare, grayish boughs and tree trunks. It began with the inspiration of sunsets seen in the month of April, hence the bare trees, Night of Nights (Sunburst) utilizes the static quality of painting to create an image of the sun that depicts a dual, transitional period. The sun seen between branches could be caught rising or setting. The spectrum of rainbow wavelengths within visible light, observable during sunrise and sunset, inspires my psychedelic palette that charges my observed and imagined natural subjects with a sense of magic. Through combined spectral coloring and serendipitous alignment, my work creates a synergistic moment that recalls a feeling of being in the right place at the right time to catch a glimpse of the miraculous.
Night of Nights (Sunburst) is part of my most recent series of paintings, titled Straight on Till Morning. Straight on Till Morning takes its title from Peter and Wendy, the original telling of the Peter Pan story. “Second to the right, and straight on till morning” is the navigational phrase delivered as guidance through the stars to the far away, magical land of Neverland. The allusion to Neverland underscores the imagination at play in the work. Drawn from the spring and summer seasons of New England’s woods and waters, the paintings are not of physical locations, but imagined or remembered places. In this series of new paintings, observation, memory, and imagination blend to create sparkling landscapes that reflect a sublime experience of nature that verges into the magical or dream-like. Reading the title in a second way, Straight on Till Morning establishes the sun, or the morning light, as a metaphor for a hopeful and guiding force. Continuing on toward morning, as a metaphor for studio practice and the optimistic activity of making art, recognizes the value of daily practice and discipline, reassuring that with repeated small action, like the rising of the sun each day, good will persist.
Emerging in the early days of a series that examined the intersections of awe, the natural world, and color and light, my ceramic campfires are one of my most well-known sculptural forms. Chosen for its dynamic form and a clear connection between color, energy, and light, campfires are a subject that communicate a meditative, mesmerizing headspace, similar to a trance. My ceramic campfires wink at the process of their own making, depicting fire through a material that requires firing to extreme temperatures of 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. In these works, ceramic flames lick hand-carved logs, capturing the ephemeral, changeful subject of fire in the solid, static materials of clay and paint. Ceramic further recalls ancient creative practices, ritual, a primal sense of the wild, and a collective space for shared storytelling.
Surfaced using a combination of cold-application oil paint and terra sigillata, a ceramic material made of refined clay and pigments suspended in water, Glinting in particular presents a more magical, subjective rendering of a campfire through a palette of cool blues and purples and warm violets and yellows. Careful use of hue and value reinforce the connection between color and illusory light, mimicking the alluring natural glow of a flame. As a painter who recently started working in ceramic sculpture, I bring my sensibilities working with color to the medium of ceramics and watch for the moment where that color transforms into light.