"I bring to my art many years' accumulation of experiences, relationships, and professional work. In my paintings I express the complexities—the chaos and beauty —of life. While most of us crave order and control, life throws us curves, producing a morass or a medley, depending on how you look at it.
As a lawyer, I wanted order. I thought in hierarchies. As an editor I learned to be precise and concise. But I kept running up against disruptions and eruptions— being uprooted many times for many reasons— leaving people and places, dearly loved, behind. Life is not neat.
I have always loved the written word, as well as the suggestion of language implicit in line itself. I love the look of shorthand and its free-flowing marks. In my paintings I often contrast straight lines or stripes (order) agains loosely "thrown" or dripped paint (loss of control, chaos), in layer after layer. Oftentimes, layers get painted over and obscured, leaving traces of what came before.
The poet Stanley Kunitz, who died in 2006 at age 100, summed it up: 'I have walked through many lives, some of them my own.' He speaks of faraway friends: 'My tribe is scattered.' Yet, in the end, he advises: 'Live in the layers, not on the litter.' In addition to this advice, I follow in the footsteps of Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombley, and Frank Stella."
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