Artist Statement
My work for the last number of years has focused on the ocean with a view for encouraging ocean conservation. Those series started as a result of living in Hawaii for six months where I experienced the joy of spending time in that beautiful water and the sorrow of seeing the damage to the coral reefs, and other sea life.
Recent years have been a time of reckoning, and a time for regrouping. It fueled my personal need to seek refuge from the traumas we are all suffering with the pandemic, global warming, social injustice, and political nightmares. Where do we turn for peace?
I go back to the seashore as I have most of my life as a place where I can find solace and experience blessed nature. That coupled with my ongoing meditation practice and recent portrait paintings led me to integrate figurative work into a series related to life on the water. With this work, I’m focusing on the joy inherit when people let their day-to-day cares slip aside as they gather at the seashore. It is a place where we can do a “reset” for a fresh view of life, a place we can just be at peace, a place to awaken joy.
Perhaps art is about presenting different mental maps that can help shape the subconscious, and hence, our future. Life becomes what we think. My hope is that these paintings invite viewers to be more present in the moment and in nature, and encourage a better vision for moving forward and honoring all life on the planet.