Artist Statement

My painting is a commitment to a search to go further with each brush stroke, each choice of color, and each nail that I have to hammer into a stubborn wall. Each painting I create is made with the same brushes and colors, on diptychs, triptychs or canvases. The scale of these works, be it 9 feet by 9 feet or 12 inches by 12 inches, is relative to the idea of my painting. Each work exists by itself — perhaps recalling previous ones but existing on its own.

Nature with its strong re-creative spirit inspires me with its diversity of light, luminosity, trees, vegetation, water and its creatures. I do not paint “landscapes”. Natural stimuli and my life, however, help my work unfold honestly and naturally but not always calmly. Through my contact and involvement with nature, the invisible and visible patterns in nature and life are recreated, passed on and resolved on the canvas. My forms, though abstract, exist as figuration. They are not traditional, but real. I like color, I use color but I do not depend on it entirely. I struggle with the tensions of dark and light, fresh and over painted, absence and presence, never having either as the solution. Rather, I try for balance as the resolution. A certain amount of “control” is necessary.

Still experiencing “accidents”—allowing them to unfold, respecting their essence—also becomes part of the balance, to be painted over, integrated into a new form. All of these steps combine to resonate to the core of each painting—created from within and resolved on the canvas.