My underlying theme has always been centered around the thought of how ‘time’ affects every single living thing. Throughout the course of my art career, time has manifested itself through imagery and paintings of wheels (what goes around comes around, the circle of life, cogs, and inner workings of a clock), nature (how the light of the day might hit a certain branch or object and cast a deep shadow on the forest floor, or how hundreds of starlings turn and flip in time with one another to form murmurations), the imagery of women (how our deep-rooted history effects and influences our youth or the personification of the battle and juggle of limited time throughout each day), and architecture (the time-lapse and encapsulation of art and design). Regardless of how it has revealed itself, the theme of time has been a consistent thread for me since 2007.
My 2019-2020 series will study the relentless gravity of time while honoring women who juggle their work life, family life, passions, chores, obligations, volunteer positions, health, etc. Over the next several months and well into 2020, I’ll be painting more than twenty mid to large-scale metaphorical and surreal pieces that grapple with the theme and weight of time. Each piece will be on cradled wood panel and first layered with a patchwork of handmade paper from Nepal. I used this same technique in 2015 when I created a series of Cambodian women and girls in order to provide all-terrain bicycles to young girls so they could travel safely from their villages to their schoolhouses. The layering of paper with this patchwork technique encourages me to create an internal dialogue that connects me with the layered lives of the figures I am painting. This technique also provides a textural contrast of design work within each piece. For this particular series, I am choosing one color for each painting and extending that color into its greatest values of both dark and light. These dreamlike and ethereal pieces aim to be both provocative and to evoke deep emotion and conversations about women and time.
