ARTIST STATEMENT

I tend to work in conceptual suites, a series of prints or mixed media works, with the range of images depending on an idea and vision. While my images are from several sources, such as decaying Hosta leaves, rusting metal, and broad textural landscapes, they all have the common elements of a singular exploration of texture, color and pattern.

I find the act of looking at textures and forms in nature to be a great source of imagery. Both natural objects and human artifacts in decay offer rich textures and colors and they start a course of discovery as I work. While I process the images and refine the realization of them, visual and tactile insights emerge. This is aided by how the prints are accomplished in this new manner of digital printing directly onto acrylic surfaced aluminum & copper, with acrylic painting and tinting, airbrush and pen & ink to expand and finalize the original vision.

After studying alternative printmaking in Santa Fe, my definition of printmaking expanded from the intaglio and relief work I was currently doing; having the traditional printing matrix of wood or copper plate that holds the image has evolved into a digital image and opened my creativity to alternate methods. This rethinking of the whole process and what makes the printing matrix fundamentally changed my art. By having my image to print digital, either drawn or from photography, allows the pigment based printer to act as the press. Using the acrylic brush, and pen & ink over the print allows further interpretation and refinement of my digitally painted and drawn works.

All of my new work has been influenced by what I see, and by the tactile process of making the plate and refining the print. So my excitement for this new way to visualize and finalize an image is partly about the process with its conceptual to hands-on elements, and partly the final visual texture and actual surface texture of the image.