I AM A LANDSCAPE PAINTER

Though fabric is my primary medium, I have always been reluctant to call myself a “fiber artist.” When I work, I consider myself to be drawing and painting. I find joy in exploring line, color, mood, and expression, only I am using torn strips of hand-dyed fabric in lieu of traditional paint or pencil.  Like many artistic approaches that utilize alternative media, my painting style is inextricably linked to a specific and rigorous process. The first step in that process is dying the fabric, which I liken to an oil painter grinding her own pigments from raw minerals, then adding the pigment to a binding agent to create the paint. It is a slow and technical process that ultimately yields the raw materials from which my paintings can then be constructed. Creating the material to paint with is very much its own experience, and often quite apart from the creative act of developing an actual composition.  Having learned how to sew as a very young child, and having spent college years and beyond making my own textiles, using both computerized and hand looms (which I have also built from scratch) I am very comfortable with slow and accretive work methods.  Though my art has departed from traditional weaving techniques, it still shares in common that decidedly tactile, very gradual, layering approach. Much like the frames of the looms I used to rely on, I stretch my strips of fabric across wooden armatures, carefully overlapping each one and allowing for frayed edges to add organic and textural interest as the greater color scape emerges.  I often refer to the majority of my work as color scapes; though evocative of the source of inspiration, most typically the sweeping landscapes of the Southwestern United States and Coastal Mexico, they are rarely directly referential to a specific location. In practice, my color scapes are approached with the same attitude that someone else might write in a journal, documenting impressions and memories with an eye towards a personal, underlying narrative. My goal, however, is never to focus specifically on journalistic detail, but rather to capture the feeling and emotional impact of nature, interpreting it into a largely abstract context. In recent years, I have been expanding my gallery work into other media, including watercolor, oil, and most recently Plein air painting and mixed media, which has been both liberating and challenging. As an artist, it is always important to push boundaries, to engage in the art-making process with the curiosity of a child, the ambition of an explorer, and the indefatigability of a marathon runner.  With sources of inspiration as personal and wholly subjective as my reactions to the natural world, and a process as labor intensive and time-consuming as my fabric layering, I am always striving to balance the importance of structure against the freedom of the experimental and the intuitive. Whatever rigors the process and the more objective principles of art may demand, there must always be room for the pure joy of the creative act.