Since childhood, I have been attracted to objects and environments of sumptuousness, delicacy, intricacy and intimacy. When I am in the presence of these objects and environments I lose sense of my reality and become preoccupied with the processes of how these subjects were conceived and built.
In particular, I am charmed by environments constructed with great care such as a garden or private retreat. Often, these spaces promote varying levels of intimacy between the inhabitant and his/her surroundings, consequentially resulting in a treasure trove of personal details and possessions.
I take great interest in the provocative, alluring, light-hearted and delicate, fantastical, and often intimate worlds generated by eighteenth century European designers, more specifically those found within the German princely palace and its surrounding park follies. Throughout much of the eighteenth century these interiors flourished into simulated gardens by way of colorfully glazed and gilded floral carvings atop richly spun textiles. The boundary between interior architectural features and furnishings was often blurred, creating both a gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) and an extension of the outdoors in the process.
My work is a reflection of both my research and personal experiences with these interiors. The building of printing plates enables me to visually strip these interiors of their colorful veneers and focus on the essential shapes in their decorative skeleton while the application of spackle, sugar, and ethereal media on canvas serves as an experience in constructing form.
Initially, my spackle paintings reflected my constant struggle to find a balance between severities. The manipulation of forms, rooted in contrasting sets of growth and erosion, expanding fluff and twisting contortions, fluid motions and hesitant steps, the continuous curve and the straight line, was enabled by the fluidity of the lightweight spackle. Working intutively with these forms has become the foundation for my current, more structured relationship with the medium.
