My art is literally created by water, and imbued with its dynamics of movement, fluidity and flow.
The drops of color spread out on the water’s surface as if magnified under a microscope lens, echoing the forms of nature. Their organic patterns suggest the nerves and blood and bones of the body’s interior.
Read about the floating colors process (below slideshow)
About the floating colors process
I begin by sprinkling thinned oil paints from a brush onto a tray filled with water. The water is blended with carrageenan moss, a kind of seaweed, to make it more viscous. Bronze powders in shades from pale gold to copper are mixed with the pigments. Deeper colors are dropped inside lighter ones to create shades and shadows.
As the colors slowly spread out on the water, they form pale circles beaded with gold, widening into ovals whose edges thread outward, veining together in darker filaments of line.
I lay paper onto this surface and transfer the floating image, then repeat the process many times, building up translucent layers of color and texture.
View a film clip of the floating colors process
These papers become the foundation for overlaid drawing, with charcoal, pastel pencil, and oil crayon. They seem like objects found in nature: shells on a beach, or patterns in sand, though filled with personal meaning. So they represent the aspect of creativity that’s natural, uncontrolled, unselfconscious … while the overlaid drawing represents its artistic duality: more conscious, willfully formed, cognizant.
The final drawings arise from a relationship between the floating colors and the figurative image.
The organic patterns of the floating colors suggest the nerves and blood and bones of the body’s interior.
Floating in water is where my body feels suspended, almost weightless, and the effort of moving is so balanced and graceful as to seem effortless. That’s the feeling I try to keep with me when I’m moving through the world, and it’s the feeling I want my work to have.
As I draw, I feel my body pouring directly into the lines I make on the paper … remembering how it feels to move freely, feeling pain dissolve into fluid grace.
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