When I first began painting the sky, I quickly realized that as our collective canvas it has tremendous influence on us, that we all connect with it on a daily basis and refer to it often...a sunny disposition, a breezy attitude, a stormy relationship, head in the clouds, the sky's the limit, things are looking up...
While the panels are stretched and bound, the gestalts have poetry and movement. It seems beauty has become a form of radical dissent and I enjoy bringing more of it into the world. The tenuous physical connections invite the viewer to let go and connect with nature. The images can be appreciated for their aesthetic appeal, for the implied freedom, potential and hope, the suggestion of endless expanse. The calming effect of the work provides an antidote to the hectic pace of life, an invitation to slow down and breathe. The larger size paintings speak directly to the natural scale of the sky while allowing for more detailed painting techniques, emphasizing the distinctive, intimate character of each subject, rather like portraits of people.
Also by studying the sky, I came to see that while it is comprised simply of air, vapor and light, it takes on a corporeality with varying degrees of density. I explored this further by adding color to the reverse sides of the panels, with the ambient tone reflecting onto the wall, incorporating and activating this other surface and the space between it, capturing light while freeing color from form. Clouds float across the panels that are floating against the wall; the panels cast shadows as well, converging field with ground. The grid and string also extend the image beyond the confines, breaking boundaries between the real and represented. The exchanges between the content and the framework are complex as the elements interact and shift; multiple gradations occur at once. The optical effects take on transitive properties while the work hovers between painting and sculpture.
I grew up in rural Connecticut, yet I've spent most of my adult life in cities - I consider myself a hybrid, affirmed by both the horizontal and the vertical. The grid is recognized as common vernacular, a unit of measure, an expression of inhabited space. This framework has a rigidity, while the sky is fluid, and the trees add gesture. Here I am reinventing the remesh as a ‘deconstruction' material, to engage in an exchange between the natural and fabricated worlds.
The metal grid reacts with the skin-like quality of canvas, emphasizing the fragile state of life and the environment. The fusion of aesthetics, nature and industry calls up the immense dynamic power of the natural elements and their interface with humanity. From this perspective, this body of work points to how ‘development' challenges our relationship with the environment, how natural resources are being stretched today in a very direct way. The string emphasizes formal tension, physical tension and creative tension. The economy of means is part of the moral - it serves as a reprieve from the clutter and overload of contemporary life.
The fragmented surfaces point to the role of human agency. The varying scale and orientation also engage the viewer, requiring us to consider our position in relation to the environment. Those images with smaller panels at the bottom and grading larger toward the top, further describe the increased role of the constructed world as each image gets closer to where we stand. The configurations allow us to look through and past our immediate world to restore nature to the center of our field of vision rather than treating it as something to be mastered or relegated to the background.