I want to thank The Art Center in Corvallis for giving us the opportunity to show our work. Jennie Castle and the Board were very insightful when they paired me with Joe Batt for this exhibition. Each of our work compliments the other's and together creates a metaphoric journey into nature, childhood, and the human experience.
Below is a link to the artists' remarks from the reception:
Some Things Are True
I am astounded by the beauty and truth I discover in the ordinary. This is at the center of my art practice. In my work I question the known by reorganizing space, time and relationship. My paintings are about the perceptual limitations that make us ghosts to one another. For a decade or so I have focused on the parallel worlds of plants and animals who share space and resources with me every day. I am curious about their perfect systems and what our shared habitat looks like through their eyes and experiences. This exhibition is a visual record of my journey into this mutual world where humans, plants and animals exist side by side and occupy each other's reality.
We humans are part of social communities and part of nature at the same time, but we don't seem to know it. This creates a feeling of otherness that allows us to act in our own self-interest. Other species have this limitation as well since unique to each species, senses evolved differently according to their specific needs for survival. I am interested in how limited perception affects all organisms in their quest for resources and space. As I work I look through nature's lens and try to enlarge my perception of reality.
By overlapping landscapes I give nature a voice in the struggle over resources and space. I explore many different shared habitats in varying seasons of the year. My imagery comes from found objects, memories, sometimes dreams, and the photographs I've taken over a lifetime of exploring Oregon. In this exhibit I include works that incorporate imagery from the coastal rain forest, the high desert and numerous wetlands and riverine environments. Using recognizable transparent and opaque imagery, I overlap wild and human made spaces to create a conversation between multiple points of view. Urban structures and technology are a metaphor for human culture and development. Often I take nature's point of view by making the humans or their inventions ghosts within the landscape. By combining elements from these disparate worlds I create a suspended space and time where nature can speak. I work in the intuitive realm, a place of no preconception where the elements of the painting respond to one another. I look for the interior space where we turn to nature for peace and healing.
Nature influences and supports me as it does most people in the Pacific NW. It is deeply embedded in our culture. Healthy ecosystems depend on relationships and, consciously or unconsciously, we are profoundly part of the ecosystem in which we exist. This work is about our relationship with nature and how we shape each other through time.
The Oregon Arts Commission tapped me for a solo exhibition in the Oregon Governor's Formal Office. Unfortunately, by the time the exhibition date came around we were deep into the pandemic and the entire exhibition program was officially cancelled.
The Art Center in Corvallis graciously gave me the opportunity to show some of that work this year in a shared exhibition with Joe Batt. Our work is a perfect pairing and I believe that it will be an exciting show filled with quirky life and humor.
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