I am often asked what my paintings are “about.” I will attempt to write a little bit about where the work comes from -- but in the end, the paintings stand alone to be judged on the their own merits.

 

 A large part of my process is simply the physical pleasure of enjoying the paint. On one level my paintings are really just about the paint, but needing something figurative to hang the paint on takes my work out of the realm of the abstract.  I don’t start painting with an idea. Rather, I allow my work to reveal itself to me. I have learned over time to allow this process to evolve at its own pace.   In many ways, the dress paintings are portraits and at their very core, they are self-portraits. In the creating of a painting, it is almost impossible not to show one’s hand as well as one’s self.

 

Over the past years I have invoked dresses to achieve a visual record of internal psychological spaces. It is in some ways ironic that the very thing we use to cover ourselves can be used so effectively as a conduit to expose. Clothing has the power to define and to categorize, to transform and to disguise, to reveal and to hide.  It wields a power far greater than most of us realize.  Our collective memories are stirred by a flash of fabric, the scratchiness of rough wool or the crunch of crinoline…spinning us back to the moments that mark our lives.

 

My recent work deals with memory…the poetics of time and place. I can think of no image more loaded with memories than a dress. From the mundane to the profound, how many of us can be brought back to that sense of place/time by the sight of a ruffle or swish of a skirt?  How many moments are marked in our minds by the garments we wore? Just as a gentle smell or sound can take us back, my hope is that these newest images will take the viewer on their own personal journeys conjuring up images long forgotten.

 

Whether I am painting dresses or shoes or the flotsam and jetsam from my own memories, if I am successful, my work will call up thoughts, feelings or memories of things unremembered… leaving the artist, and at times the viewer, feeling just a little bit naked.