Artist’s Statement
Into the Red began as just doing something in the studio, probably after a hike to a beloved place. It is about my physical engagement with the process of adding and taking away. I primed the 300-lb cold-press watercolor paper with gesso, added a warm underpainting, forced soft charcoal pigment into the fibers of the paper while it was wet, then washed and wiped it away. I added more dark masses, continuing to wipe out and dissolve the boundaries between light and dark, and waited. It sat in a pile of unresolved work. After our warmest spring, summer, and fall yet, I made the additions of red and white to heighten its warm tonalities and movement. Temperatures ominously rising, warming, things disappearing, into the red.