Artist Statement
I currently work in both pastels and oils. The pastel medium for me is truly a painting medium and allows for great portability and immediacy that I value as a plein air artist. In addition, its inclusive and sophisticated palette entices my imagination to create images that can express highly personal ideas. Pastels cultivate my love for mark making and reveal my personality with each stroke.
Recently, I have reintroduced myself to working with oils and am enjoying their lush fluidity and breadth of palette and surface. The experimentation process is paramount right now as I explore building unique color relationships and developing a comprehensive painted surface. I am continuing my plein air painting as pure observations of the landscape, exercises in seeing, designing, and reacting. This work is the foundation on which I build more personal expression.
Often a group of paintings will suggest themes and metaphors for the human experience, and may develop into a series that becomes something more worldly. Through my experimentation process I will often let go of the restrictions of representation and develop abstractive images that evoke both intimate and vast space. I find this painting process very meditative because it promotes an extemporaneous method. From these ventures I have developed a series of abstractions, both large and small, that are loosly based on Satellite maps of rural areas.
I have won awards with The Pastel Society of America, The Artists' Magazine, and The Philadelphia Water Color Society as well as many local organizations. My work has been featured in Rockport Publisher's The Best of Pastel Books I and II, Art Matters Magazine, and Chester County Living Magazine, and most recently was published in Kennedy Publishing's Best of America Pastels Volume II.
I am represented by Strodes Mill Gallery in West Chester, PA and Hardcastle Gallery in Centreville, DE.