ARTIST’S STATEMENT

In these new paintings and drawings I am exploring liminal places: the boundaries between the seen and unseen, waking and sleeping, presence and absence. While many of the works verge on landscape, I am hoping to move beyond the readily apparent to disclose the elemental forces at work beneath the surface of the natural world. On November 7, 2006, shortly after moving to Wisconsin, I began making a drawing each day; this show contains selections from the first 265 drawings of Everyday Apocalypses, the year-long series. These drawings have helped to shape my new paintings and to shift the content and structure in new and unexpected directions. Through this daily act I am beginning to form a world with its own characters and language of shape. The results are often mysterious to me as I try to understand how these different elements combine and collide in the work. Like much of the art that I admire the most—the paintings of Francisco Goya and Charles Burchfield, the films of Andrey Tarkovsky, and the writings of Hildegard of Bingen—I am working with the idea of art as a meditation on the nature of existence: its darkness and mystery and also its possibilities for light and redemption.