This watercolor work was continuously turned in a circle as I painted faces I saw in a stone. A wonderful example of how art changes with one's point of view.
Some of the most exciting, and dangerous, art I have made involved sealing drawings, found objects and extruded letters inside Plexiglas boxes.
This tiny extruded acrylic letter inspired a favorite phrase that I still use when writing my artist's statements: "I feel like a little hook reaching into mystery."
When I learned that throughout history artists have died from toxic fumes, I decided to put down the propane torch and chemical mask, and go for safer materials.
The drawing became beading on a loom, the wood became the frame, and the construction process itself became rain.
While this small acrylic painting seems to echo the painting I do on my frame drums with raw earth pigments, the new art here is the process itself. Lots of different kinds of mark-making materials were smeared around inside a cereal box. While this was drying a slip of paper was drawn from three different piles of nouns and verbs. A section of cereal box was copied and then embellished to become the image for the title made from the three words: Welcome to Swim House. Years later this is still one of the most enigmatic pieces I have ever painted.
Sometimes what makes new art is not doing anything new at all. This accidentally double exposure while on a camping trip became a symbol of Waiting for Apocalypse to me, made all the more potent
with the technology itself as the subject.
I think my favorite way to make new art is to transform something old and damaged into a new form.
This failed drum head became a pen and ink drawing, and then a raw earth pigment painting, and then was sewn inside a warped drum hoop which became filled with turkey feathers. Somewhere in the middle of this process I realized I was creating blood lines, and swimming sperm, and the egg of new beginnings.
