work

 

Two life-long passions that drive my work are my love of polka dots and my ongoing
enthusiasm for vintage paper ephemera and books. I use collage and silkscreen to
combine and juxtapose the two, creating a dynamic visual world of layered contrasts.
This palette of visual obsessions inspires me in many ways, as I explore the relation-
ship between high and low, order and chaos, the abstracted and the everyday. I
also strive to push and challenge the boundaries of conventional printmaking: I paint
with paper.

Dots are my figure, my landscape and my frame. Artists from Lichtenstein to Polke to Hirst have used the dot in their own work, whether as a sly allusion to the CMYK dots that comprise all printed images or in reference to its elemental and eternal shape. They serve to focus, reveal, subsume and re-contextualize my abstracted paper narratives. The root of my narrative choices begins with a love of paper and its physical tactile nature. I am drawn to paper and books produced in the 1950s and ’60s: a time when printing techniques were basic and information was conveyed in a more simple and unsophisticated way. I also use a printing process that has not changed in decades. I find this all refreshing in today’s high-tech virtual world.

The choices I make are influenced by a range of criteria, including content, style, color, scale and sometimes simply intuition. I begin with a visually dense background collage, then use the dots and a layering of ink to alternately highlight and conceal the visual content. This creates a dialogue between the foreground and background by fostering a complex and ambiguous sense of space. Though I strive to make my own order out of the chaos, it is my hope that each viewer navigates his or her own path of discovery. Like the varied uneven edges of my work, interpretation is best when not limited by four corners.