The works in the Luminosity series are influenced by the mindfulness of staying in place and exploring both a metaphoric inner human light and the fluid and fleeting quality of observed light as it moves through the spaces of one’s surroundings. Impressions of natural and artificial light on objects, combined with an awareness of a symbolic light that connects us to people and that we share among communities is the basis for these current compositions.

I use fluid materials to explore movement, shape, transparency and interconnections. Even in those pursuits where I am pushing my materials into forms contrary to their properties, I consider myself a painter. 

The Blends painting project is ongoing, with well over 30 paintings completed to date. The series began as a way to explore my multi-culturalism as a uniquely blended individual, along with the intention to collect and portray narratives from friends and acquaintances. Abstraction begins with content as the paintings develop from solicited lists and stories of real peoples’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds and experiences. The blended-ness of people creates interesting identity issues that the abstract “portraits” explore through formal investigation: colors are distinct, but layered together they become new forms, and the paintings develop as I join these parts into harmony. In this way, I am constructing composite “portraits” made up of colors and shapes that combine visually to create a new and complex identity. Paintings are exhibited with the corresponding stories. (Stories presented on this website may be longer than what shows up in the text box.)

These works are composed with the notion that each individual is their own unique blend, but all are part of, and reliant upon, a larger system. All works in this project are made with oil paint and resin on panel with additional mixed media.

Considering concepts of identity in our current state of things, I have been exploring compositions in diptych format using abstract head-like forms paired as a couple but with gazes that do not include the other. The paintings are loosely informed by paintings of couples by David Hockney, which show a pair of individuals in a space together, but not necessarily including the other in their portrait. This type of image, to me, reflects on our current moment of isolation and inter-dependency. Are we as humans becoming more isolated, even as we become more intertwined?

We often find ourselves faced with addressing the differences between people, via identity, politics, economic stature, family origin, and more. Real entwined thread, or pulled lengths of wool, in the Common Threads paintings are a metaphor for commonly shared experiences bridging these different identity issues. Shared experiences bind people and their histories together in intimately interesting ways. I am working to use these links and metaphoric threads as a means to find common ground and harmony. 

Watercolor on canvas, 48 x 96", 2019. This painting began on the ground on the bank of the Wisconsin River in 2016 and was completed in Baltimore in 2019. It was made to be oriented in any direction. The painting portrays an aerial view of an invented world but based on our own, with colors and imagery suggesting a movement of people through various terrains. In keeping with my ongoing concern of human relationships, collective movement, and migration, the piece is about forced migration worldwide due to climate change.