I have been painting professionally since 2015. I have had the benefit of learning from many teachers over the years, but am largely self-taught--trusting my instincts, engaging in constant experimentation, and always following whatever directions my heart and hand will take me.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

I think of my paintings as acts of faith.
Brush in hand, I lean in - listening. In the space between fear and faith, the painting emerges - color, texture, shape, image, wax, ink, oil - and eventually the story is revealed.

My work is a visual interpretation of my interior relationships with ideas and experiences around the concepts of journey, wayfinding, passages, and perspectives.

The visual symbolism I find interesting includes images of cairns, boats, peaks and valleys, stones, lines passing over one another, unexpected moments, colors, and rhythms. In every painting, there is an element of disruption or surprise where the line is stopped, and the motion resisted and then (possibly) restored. It is these two elements, surprise and disruption, which yield a depth that is visually and emotionally intriguing to me.

I work primarily in encaustic and oil and cold wax mediums.
Encaustic paintings have a distinct texture due to the layering of hot wax and pigments. The wax creates a dimensional effect as it hardens, resulting in a surface that can be smooth or heavily textured. Also known as hot wax painting, the encaustic medium is a mixture of beeswax and resin to which colored pigments are added. The wax is painted on the surface of a prepared panel. Each layer of wax is fused to the panel with a propane torch, and as the layers build they can be scraped back, etched, sculpted, etc.

The oil and cold wax medium offers a wide range of possibilities. Cold wax is mixed with oil paint or other materials such as powdered pigments and metals, oil and ink, roofing tar, etc. The wax can be applied with a scraper, a cloth, a brush, or a palette knife. It can then be scraped, etched, and carved using different tools or found objects for mark-making.

My process is additive and subtractive.
I apply multiple layers of oil and cold wax, or encaustic medium, creating shapes and textures, and then scrape back the surface or apply solvents to reveal earlier shapes, lines, and images. I work in faith that the process of layering and revealing will carry me forward until the painting's full story reveals itself and says, “Done.”