Artist Statement: My encaustic paintings are created out of a deep sense of the oneness of humankind and nature. In a world of illness, conflict, loss and division, I believe my paintings bring experiences of beauty, peace and healing to individuals and community.
Through my painting and my profession as an art therapist and marriage, family therapist, for the past 30 years, I have sought to relieve distress and bring healing to individuals and families experiences illness, suffering and loss. I have worked in hospitals and residential centers as an artist and therapist, and in communities with people of many ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.
I have a personal relationship to nature as healing. Following the death of my father when I was six, I found it comforting being within nature and intensely experiencing the colors and forms, movements and scents. I grew up in the Midwest, where my cousin is a bee farmer. In the early 90s, I visited his farm while caring for my ill mother. I brought back a large piece of beeswax and began to experiment with it in my artwork.
In the Interval Series, I have created repeated patterns, incorporating and revealing ginko leaves. The ginko leaf is from the oldest deciduous tree. As elements from it are used to enhance memory, it symbolizes memory. Just as artifacts are preserved in wax, I preserve these leaves and the memory of our relation to nature within these paintings. A pattern or rhythm is created, and as in nature, no two leaves are exactly alike, nor are any two intervals perceived as the same. The warm, sensuous, encaustic surface and repeated patterns invite eye and spirit into experiencing the rhythm and flicker of leaves in sunlight and shadow – not a depiction of a specific place or moment, but a re-experiencing of texture, light and movement – the healing rhythms of nature.
- Created: 2002
- Current Location: Clerk-Recorders, Oakland Office - 1106 Madison Street Oakland, CA 94607 (google map)
Alameda County Arts Commission
https://arts.acgov.org/
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