ARTIST STATEMENT Dusk on Lucy’s Pond oil painting series, 2005 to present
I like to think of dusk as an atmospheric fold that offers the day its final bow before the evening curtain. Contrasts blur, shadows converge, colors soften. These paintings were inspired by simply gazing down into the water directly beneath me and letting it take me away.
DUSK ON LUCY’S POND
Finegold Creek twists through the Sierra Nevada foothills just north of Fresno. Exhilarating in winter and quietly still during the smoldering days of August, the creek ebbs and flows with the seasons producing thundering white-waterways, icy-cold waterfalls, ribbon-thin streams and smooth quiet pools. One of these pools is Lucy’s Pond – a liquid celestial body held in the hands of massive granite boulders and thousands of cattails rooted in rich creek silt. Each year, the distribution of cattails redefines the pond’s borders. Lush woodlands of oak, redbud, river willow and evergreen reflect into the cold mountain water – clear water that curls around broad flat rocks that beg you to lie down and do nothing.
POINTS OF VIEW
Light reflecting on an undulating medium and refracted light bending through the water’s depths creates an orchestrated chaos of shifting patterns. Viewing the surface, I noticed concentric rings of water retain their shape even as they expand and cross paths with one another – becoming complex Tartan plaids before fading to nothingness. Mesmerized by this phenomenon, I lost all sense of subject and ground thus I’ve rendered these paintings without reference points to land, horizon or reflected objects. With no sharp delineations between sky, water and ground, the perspective suggests an undulating flatness only intensified by the time of day. One may choose how to look: skimming the surface, diving down deep, swimming up toward the light above, floating horizontal to the creek bed, or slowly exploring the pond’s murky depths and underwater caves. With a relaxed eye many of these paintings reveal several perspectives simultaneously
TECHNIQUE
Glazing is a method of laying down paint in thin transparent layers. Most of these paintings have between 30 to 80 layers of glaze. I work very slowly and allow each layer to completely dry before applying the next. I don’t aim for saturated colors and deliberately let sections of canvas weave peek through, similar to watercolorists who reveal the pure whites or colors of the original paper. Glazing is a tricky process that demands patience and a willingness to completely give up what came before. A painting can change drastically with just one application of glaze. Much depends on the opacity or transparence of the original pigment, the strength of the mixed tints, the ratio of pigment to medium and the type of medium, itself. Other factors are the size of the area to be glazed, the warmth or coolness of the tint, the warmth or coolness of the color below it and what color is or will be next to it.
Arts-related Activities
1995 – 1999, Artist, Fresno’s Tower Mardi Gras’ collectible poster series
1989 – 1991, Los Angeles, Melrose Ave Studio Space
1982, New Orleans, joined the staff of the Contemporary Art Center
1977, Albany, New York, member, Workspace Loft, an alternative gallery. Relocated to New Orleans, in 1979, and continued my affiliation with Workspace until 1981.
Ongoing: Contributor to community organizations’ fundraising art events, including: Arts for Aids, Planned Parenthood, Fresno Wildlife Rehabilitation, San Joaquin River Parkway Trust, Fresno Art Museum
Education
Emerson College, Boston (1971 – 1972), Travel Abroad (1972 – 73)
Arts Students League of New York, 1974; State University of New York at Albany, 1976 – 78
University of New Orleans, 1979 – 82;
University of the State of New York, BS (Liberal Arts), 1984