Artist’s Statement
Between sunrise eyes, and the rush of the brush
Between diaphanous dawn and opacity’s dusk
Between painted wild and eternal child
Between cultural shifts and ideology rifts
Between perception in Maine, and our breathing refrains
A life force is dreamed, between the sea and her seams.
(We float through the bold with the stories we hold).
“I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have spent every sunrise for the last nine years at the ocean’s edge, and I observe the sunrise 365 days a year. Each day’s experience is always different, and each is palpably profound. For me, Maine’s wilderness rests on the sunlit ocean horizon. That particular wildness holds balance for me within the current cultural ache: offering me solace and healing within both its turbulent waters, and its pristine passages of tranquil tides. Both forces are alive in me. I am mesmerized each morning as first light separates sea and sky, and merges spheres with sunlight. Though I have witnessed thousands of consecutive dawnings, this year’s discipline has been the most poignant. My devotion to this ritual has carried me through even the most daunting tragedies and losses, as well as fueling my spirit and my work, and I endeavor to extend this light out to others. The current post-pandemic world calls me to the most intensely felt color phenomena, and the most powerful surges of light, as I am keenly aware of our own finite nature. It is as if I seek to unite all seemingly stark divisions, soothing the bereft within me, and hopefully soothing it within a few others, somewhere rising slowly from the painted trail that lifts from my brush.
Moon Dune 6 was a work of discovery for me and a response to having observed my first pivotal sunrise over ocean water after a difficult surgery. Faced with the struggle to heal and walk in a new way, I accidentally experienced profound beauty at the ocean’s edge. I dropped all prior work and began creating works that sought to paint out how tiny and fragile I had felt in front of that vast, awe inspiring, and powerful sunlit ocean.
My works suddenly became explorations of the intimate and the infinite and I have spent every sunrise for the last nine years at the ocean’s edge observing the sunrise 365 days a year. The experience has been boldly impactful, healing, life changing, and humbling all at once.
Since the pandemic began, in particular, I feel a strong calling to merge and extend my healing moments in nature with others.
We are facing a cultural crisis in our current world and the artists feel it in every cell. With Maine waters and sunlight translated by those fully feeling artists, artworks have a chance to become an immune system of sorts and a place for strengthening and renewal. I hope to rinse the jaded and weary eyes out there with fresh particles of beauty, gleaned from the edges of Maine’s waters, and always from the edge of its day and night. Perhaps these small works become my own kind of painterly attempts at the “proof” that we still hold far more than we’ve lost. Like the sun through the nightly darkness, slowly rising in revelation, I seek to lift.