Still-life is a genre I’m particularly drawn to because of the compositional challenges. Realism is but a part of what I find intriguing. Rather, it is the design that’s created when color, light, pattern, and texture come together which becomes the key fascination for me. Flowers are often included in my work because they have an uncanny ability to engage me, delighting my sense with their unique essence. They provide a living story that I can share with my viewers and help me create an emotional connection between myself and the viewers. It all begins with that spark of inspiration that a flower provides. I often feel compelled to take the still-life to another plateau, adding additional geometric patterns and symbols. It is the mysterious mixture of beauty and symbolism, whose significance cannot be fully understood at a simple glance, that I hope asks the viewer to engage in a dialogue with the images, to go beyond the easily recognized pictorial content.
My goal is to always be excited about my work and to try to maintain a freshness in each new painting. The process should involve play, taking risks, and exploring creative possibilities. My aim is to achieve an overall painterly quality that allows the observer to continually reach beyond the obvious and find meaning with each viewing of the watercolor.
Taking advantage of the flowing quality of watercolor paint, I try to create a rich, impressionistic, almost fantasy painting that envelopes and surprises. In addition to still-lifes and landscapes, I enjoy abstracts for their subtlety, ambiguity, complexity and highly personal nature.