Five Crowded Memories (visual stutter)

About the paintings – 2011

In the recent "visual stutter" series, I am exploring how subtle shifts in viewpoint and repetition effect our perception. The diptychs of bundles stand as "memories" that change across time.

I paint in oil from direct observation in a 'colorito' technique (many layers of glazing) without under-drawing on the panel. I build a baroque illusion of voluminous hills and valleys from incremental nudgings of paint.

Memory and private thoughts are my primary themes in these paintings. The wrapped forms suggest both secrets kept and the promise of a gift; you might imagine one of your dearest objects beneath the chaos of bound folds. The viewer may filter through a personal bank of memories and desires to meditate on what is contained within.

Shawn Hill wrote: "what's unusual, for such an accomplished still life artist, is her willingness to allow mystery and imagination to remain such a large component of her finished work. …Her titles add to the sense of unease, every bit as suggestive and direct as her confident technique." ¹

I allow my images to be as precise and as elusive as poetic language; there are ties to poetry in execution, time and the way the mind collects and protects imagery and meaning. I use cloth as a universal symbol of Civilization – a common thread - the fabric of time, of space, the fabric of memory, how the brain operates scientifically. I think the mind is like a fabric, the weave of memory bound by reflection and shadow. The fabric of time and space does not dictate form but holds it. Cloth is a curtain, an adornment, a shroud or a protection.

¹ Hill, Shawn. "Part and Parcel at Arden Gallery" artsMEDIA, December 15, 2001 - February 15, 2002, pp.6,7