Artist Statement: Botanical Abstracts

The later works of Odilon Redon have been a strong influence on me especially his use of pentimenti (“the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over”) and has led me to consider using my interest in gardening and botany as a motif for a continuing series of small botanical abstracts. Each was started as a mono print using oil pigments on various supports. To each I added oil-based mediums to make more and more complex webs of layers.

Artist Statement for Humpty Dumpty, a Triptych:

    A snowflake almost melted

   passing by thin walls of hubris

   ordering the way down

   past chunks of rotting mortar.

   Fractals humming, singing

   “quick, pull out the trowel

   point face your pentimenti

   push, pull, prepare

   a soft landing.”

   It is Humpty who will not be put together again.