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.
My art is literally created by water, and imbued with its dynamics of movement, fluidity and flow.
About the 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.
View a film clip of the floating colors process
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.
Transferred to paper, they become the foundation for overlaid figurative drawing, with charcoal, pastel pencil, and pastel.
Even though I’ve created them myself, these pspers seem like objects found in nature – shells on a beach, or patterns in sand, though filled with personal meaning. So they embody the aspect of creativity that’s natural, uncontrolled, unselfconscious … while my overlaid drawing embodies its artistic duality: more conscious, willfully formed, cognizant.
The surface of the water is like the plane of consciousness, a lens for the eye of imagination to be refocused.
In my early work, I used the floating colors imagery to suggest the forms of nature and express the feeling of living in my body. As my work became more figurative and anatomical, the organic patterns of the floating colors helped me to suggest the nerves and blood and bones of the body’s interior.
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.
More about the drawings: media, paper, etc.
Overview of all the artwork