Artist's Statement
The elements in nature connect in choreographed
movement–the pounding of waves carving away at the shoreline,
the bending and curving of a tree as it grows and takes shape.
I consider trees. How old are they? Older than me? How
long will they be here after I am gone? What has happened in
the world around them as they have grown and how has this
shaped them?
In the book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, Robert
Macfarland explores what lies underneath the ground and how
what is below is so interconnected to what is above. The idea
that the earth has a deeper sense of time than what we
experience in our individual lives has prompted me to try to
grasp the deeper time of a tree: the idea that a seed could wait
for over a thousand years for the right circumstances to crack
open and begin to grow or how the rings of a pacific northwest
cedar carries within it a record of the elements that have
impacted its growth for hundreds of years. Documented within is
everything from the variation in weather to what has seeped
into the surrounding soil.
Metaphorically, the trees are in many ways like buried
funeral urns, which Macfarland refers to as conservancies of
memory. This is how I see trees–an imprint of what has
happened in their surrounding environment, living and growing
in a symbiotic relationship with all that surrounds them both
above and below the surface. To capture this idea, I gravitate to
working from unusual shapes that reflect this dance with their
surroundings. Using large mixed media paintings, I emphasize
capturing forms that bend and curve into space. Texture and
movement are created through loose marking and the layering
of materials. In these shapes I let the forms come to life of their
own accord to reach out and share their story engaging in a
dialogue with the viewer.
