MIXED MEDIA WORKS ON STONE
Midland Gallery • 13 Midland Ave, Montclair, New Jersey MAY 1999
This collection of paintings explores artists’ sources for inspiration and reflection. The collection’s aim is to record the moments of illumination that lead to creativity. If these moments are captured, their magic can awe and inspire the audience as much as they do the artist.
As artists, we spend much of our time in the process of making that we often take for granted the flickers of inspiration that drive us in a particular direction or into building a body of work. After years of pursuing our particular interests sometimes we forget how we got there. I wanted to remember.
In this most recent work, I have chosen to focus on the direct exploration of mixed media on stone. These materials gave me an immediacy of drawing as well as the ability to create richer surfaces, while affording me the color without which I cannot seem to work. I cannot help but set limitations on the work through my choice of materials. By necessity, these works are small in scale and intimate and thus felt appropriate for exploring the visitations of my muse. She comes when and and how she likes. As most of us, I have to coax her to visit more often and when she comes I am always amazed at what she brings.
I found myself drawing on rocks and I let my muse lead the way! It was not a scientific or planned journey but rather a serendipitous one, full of motifs that inspired my earliest work as an artists. They cannot help but be paintings with surfaces that delight in color and pattern, but they have returned to some of the simplest forms in which centuries of artists have found their inspiration, such as landscape, the female form and imagery from icons.”
