Artist's Statement

 
I make work about the feral nature of domestic life.

My imagery depicts metaphors of crossing boundaries between wild and tame, safe and unsafe, love and fear.  The works range in scale from letter-size to wall-size and convey a tactile quality that engages the viewer on a physical level. How I manipulate oil and charcoal into form and meaning is a magical process to me. The surface texture emerges slowly from my hand. My relationship to the material underscores the narrative of the imagery. Both process and imagery come together to describe the tension between two psychological places, one of control and one of instinct.

In depicting children, I create imaginary spaces where gesture is informed by context. I often create backgrounds from botanical and anatomical sources to draw deliberate connections between the human body and various plant structures. I learn efficiency by observing tributaries, dependence by observing systems. Visually, I am interested in combining non-objective mark making with dimensional figures. I follow what is visually compelling, and through the hours I spend with each drawing or painting, slowly understand their meaning. Narratives evolve around everyday experience butted up against archetypal notions of domestic roles. I find humor and anxiety go hand in hand so occasionally attempt to mitigate how embarrassingly earnest I tend to be with a bit of dark absurdity. I also like reinterpreting the simple experiences of childhood as grand myth, alluding to the complex posturing that pervades growing up. I express what life looks like from my vantage point.

For several years starting in 2003 and ending in 2008, I made paintings of deer road kill.  I sketched and photographed at the side of the road, and then completed them in my studio. The resulting works act as both homage and exploitation, describing the capricious nature of violence. The deer road kill series also contrasts to my usual studio practice because I invented so little. I consider them as counter balancing the images of children. Together they describe a recognition of the cycles of life and inform each other both in their differences and their similarities. They demonstrate the way artifice and reality coexist by necessity, much in the same way as life and death.

Recent News and Exhibitions

2013

Elegy Theo Ganz Studio Beacon, NY  March 9th through April 7th, 2013 New work from the Trophy Series

Finding the Balance, a Dialog between Three Artists,  Reconciling Art and Motherhood  Editor: Rachel Epp Buller, Department of Art, Bethel College. Ashgate publishers. 2012. Contributors will be at the College Art Association Book Fair on February 15, 2013.

2012

Art and Motherhood: A Panel Discussion
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art
This panel brings together artists at different stages of their careers to discuss their work, their practice and how motherhood has affected them. The artists deal either directly or obliquely with motherhood as subject matter while avoiding the pitfalls of self-martyrdom and sentimentality. After they introduce their work, the discussion will open up to include the audience in sharing ways to maintain a productive studio practice while balancing the obligations and rewards of family life.

Panelists: The Ladies Auxiliary, Judy Glantzman, Lori Merhige, Diana Quinby, and Jackie Skrzynski

2011

• After School Special, The 2011 Alumni Show University at Albany Museum -Curated by Ken Johnson.
• The Human Form Ann Street Gallery, Newburgh, NY -Curated by Virginia Walsh
• Arte et Maternite, Le Dernier Tabou?  Abattoirs d’Avallon, France April 30-June 13 -Curated by Diana Quinby.
• Myself: A Survey of Contemporary Self-Portraiture University of Nevada, Reno Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery -Curated by Marjorie Vecchio. Catalog essay by Mira Schor and Joy Garnett.

2010

• Contemporary Art and Praxis: Hudson Valley Artists 2010, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz.- Curated by Thomas Collins.
• Love and Blood: The Ties that Bind (2 person show with Hila Sela) A Gathering of the Tribes, LES, NYC. 

Publications

• Finding the Balance, a Dialog between Three Artists,  Reconciling Art and Mothering Editor: Rachel Epp Buller, Department of Art, Bethel College. Ashgate publishers. 2012.
• A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine, Steve Cannon, editor in chief, Janet Bruesselbach and Jack Tilton, art co-editors, issue 13, 2011, work reproduced, P 56.
• Tenwordsandoneshot.com- an international, web-based art project created by Kevin Krumnikl. The curator asks selected artists to provide a photograph (shot) of their studio and a written response to ten words. Edition I. Traveling exhibition will follow.
• 2 River View: Poetry, Art and Theory, Richard Long, editor, 15.3 Spring 2011, 15.4 Summer 2011, 12.3 Spring 2008, 10.2 Winter 2006, work reproduced online and PDF.