Artist Statement

I have lived my whole life in large cities, yet in me there has always lived a deep love of nature. Through overlapping and interrelating of city streets and natural landscapes, I explore the beauty of both worlds and a space where they overlap in me. I study the same imagery through various media–—painting, printmaking, collage, and cut-silhouettes with their cast shadows–—together in a single body of work, much as I combine the urban and the natural in a single piece.

The shapes and forms of the streets are familiar and comfortable to me. I love the geometry of repeating roof-peaks, and crossing overhead-lines. I love to walk down the street and imagine the lives behind all those windows. And, yet, too, my heart yearns toward the inspiration of water and trees, and I often stop my bicycle just to gape in awe at the sun streaking through the clouds.

When I was younger, I would feel conflicted about these extremes in myself, but as I've grown older I find that I carry the urban and natural with me at all times and build connections to both worlds through my body and my artwork. Through my work I begin to discover a feeling of myself as solidly connected to the present, physical place and at the same time connected to another, more spiritual space.

I begin by drawing a city street on hardboard, then cutting it to silhouette. Using the silhouette as a wood-block, I make a short edition of prints on a variety of mono-printed color-fields. I cut and re-collage some of these prints, overlaying new patterns with the existing street scene. I return to the cut-silhouette and paint a natural landscape on its surface, alternately focusing on the space of the painting, and the forms of the cityscape. Finally, I frame the piece to sit away from the wall so that it casts shadows into the voids, connecting the work to the space of the viewer.

By pushing and pulling focus between multiple images in the same piece, and the same image across multiple pieces and media, I seek to explore and express a sense of holding a multiplicity of viewpoints and experiences and memories together in one moment, in one life.