The X Series Paintings

This work began as a conversation between two places. Two ways of seeing daily life.

For many years, that daily view was the ocean, cool trade wind breezes, clouds moving across the sky and landscapes covered in shades of color. This shaped how I painted while living in Hawaii without even noticing it. The forms of my work then took on an organic feel and texture because the world around me was completely organic.

The move to a large city would replace that world. Something new and completely different became part of my daily view. The sharp edges of high rise buildings and endless retail storefronts were now everywhere.

Wanting to express the contrast of life past and present with this new work, I began exploring the feelings from my recent past with where I was now.

This entirely new body of work represents my merged observations by aligning past memories with the urban energy of the present.

Layering and Composition

Each piece was created through both spontaneous and deliberate application. Painted forms began the process while geometric shapes were layered into position later. As the process continued, many of the earlier elements would become completely covered while others were only slightly obscured, leaving traces of what had been there before. The result is a continual exchange between emotion and intuition, shaped by memories of the past and observations of the present.

The S Series Paintings

This body of work immediately followed the completion of the X Series and began with the creation of sculptured wood panels. The nontraditional substrate provided a new and different approach for how I began each piece. Combining shapes that added tension with other elements that provided structure and balance.

Because the X Series had become an entirely new approach to composition, the new S Series with sculptured panels became what felt like a natural next step into new territory.

Shape and Surface

The sculptured wood panels evolved from a desire to take the work beyond the X Series and explore how the physical shape of the substrate could become part of the completed composition itself.

The irregular edges became additional elements as they introduced movement into each piece. This combination allowed the shapes, colors and forms to merge as a single composition, giving the S Series its distinctive look.