1970's Relief Paintings
My work from the 1970’s shows an intense/stubborn search for my own visual language. Having internalized the language of abstraction, the weight of values, the timed travel of the eye through the composition, and the historical theories of color, I embarked on material explorations beyond the traditional flat canvas surface. My preparations as a weaver, mosaic layer and religious fresco painter, prepared me for attention and sensitivity to touch. Now surfaces began to lift themselves from the flat ground, creating shadows and highlights. When hammering sheets of lead, drawing with acids and waxes, shaping copper, casting lead, bronze, and glass - my fascination focused on the light of reflective surfaces of imagined richness and depth.
1980's Reliefs
In the 1980’s, I was infatuated with reliefs and created many raised constructions with found objects, re-interpreting a message based on form rather than on the object’s previous existence and materiality, as well as our memory and psychology of prior application/use. I was always fascinated by the transformative power through novel relationships. Using predominantly wood, I explored the natural beauty of the material, its color and texture, however, I could not let go totally of painted color, accentuating or redefining space, edge, repetition, and rhythm.
1990's Sculpture
The commitment to be a sculptor was made with conviction and contentment in the 1990’s. What won me over physically and psychologically was my love affair with materials generally and with wood and stone specifically. Their formation, their origin - millennia as far as stones are concerned, bare decades in terms of wood, - attracted me to explore and to gain understanding through empathy and curiosity. Because of my respect of the evolutionary processes, I never wanted to dominate a stone or tree trunk with my fleeting ideas, but I rather relied on my intuitive understanding of its inherent form possibilities.
2000's Sculpture
The work from 2000 demonstrates a certain security and eloquence in handling diverse materials. My form choices, being based on the inherent character of the material in front of me, challenged me to always search for the potential release of a particular lineal movement, scale, penetration, rhythm, or sense of wholeness. Honesty to the material, integrity and individuality of form became my incessant drive.
2010's Sculpture
By 2010, I felt very comfortable in my accumulated technical skills, and I was eager to dare larger sculptures. I focused not only on a larger scale but also on greater depth in the pursuit of revealing the light and transparency particularly of translucent alabasters. The mystery and surprise of a stone’s interior - millennia-old secrets - drove me to dare and push the technical limits of the material while the dominant visual motivations were clarity of form, surprising form relationships, and perceptual multiplicity that is metamorphoses.
2020's Sculpture
Now, in the 2020’s, the surprise and drive to reveal and share the mysteries of nature’s emissaries, emboldens me to create forms that invite viewer participation through the anticipation of personal touch. The haptic sense is cultivated through both form choices and surface manipulation. Most of the wood I use I find in the woods of generous friends as the rotten logs and half-buried root systems call out to me for rescue and rebirth. Through my work, I endeavor to share my love of discovery as well as the visual provocation of a unique encounter with forms and materials.
