Artist Statement

The guiding principle I have followed as an artist is that beauty is a worthy end in itself.  Attaining beauty can be a transcendent spiritual experience.  As such it has depth and meaning.  I grew up in an outdoor loving family and much of my subject matter is inspired by nature.  I’ll often start with a seed idea from the natural world.  It can be as simple as a bird and flower, tide pool, or something more visually complicated such as a memory, or exploration of a subject that is set in nature.  I then strive to make the artwork as physically beautiful as possible.   I work in both collage and painting.  My collages evolved from teaching screen printing.  I initially used cut paper collage as a way of teaching stencil making.  The precision, detail, and flatness of color appealed to me and I continued with this process after I gave up my Philadelphia screen printing studio in 2001.  I discovered Wycinanki, the Polish folk art of paper cutting in 2011.  The subject matter of birds, flowers and wild colors contrasting with a unifying black background paper appealed to me and I gave it a try.  I quickly found Wycinanki’s traditional symmetry limiting, but still loved it’s stylized and graphic qualities, and felt the limiting parameters created a strength and visual power.  The best analogy I can use is that of a power washer.  When all that water is forced through a small opening it comes out with great force.  I feel this way about the paper cut technique and the graphic simplicity of the imagery.