What inspires me to create a new painting? It could be anything from a certain mood conjured from a memory or music, or a new change of seasons and the beauty of nature. When I begin a new painting I think about what surface I want to connect with. I have always loved paintings or studies on beautiful heavy paper with interesting and unexpected textures or materials applied to them.
I love the simplicity of black and white paintings similar to what Franz Kline created. As well as the expressionistic spontaneity of William de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg . Lately I have been exploring a softer color palette by using a lot of white and soothing pastel colors of pinks ,aquas ,and grays. And I can’t resist adding accents of real gold leaf to add richness and depth. Contrasting washes of soft color with heavy thick layers of paint and stone like texture add even more visual interest and play off each other.
I’ve always loved and collected quartz crystals of all sizes since childhood. I’ve been experimenting with actually applying them to the paintings, as if they are embedded and part of the canvas. It adds a unique visual and textural element to the paintings and resonates with what is found in nature with what is created in an abstract way with paint.