photo: Susan Rabinowitz
My paintings, like landscapes slowly forming and evolving over time are like slabs of earth, cut out and tipped forward. I build up my surfaces, first with layers of acrylic paint mixed with crushed coral and then with thick, clay-like oil paint. They are constructed much like the earth’s strata, from the deepest layer (the bedrock) up to the surface (the soft topsoil). Each layer consumes and buries the preceding one. Fossilized animals (plastic toys embedded in the paint) emerge from the depths. As things build up, I’ll scrape through the crusty surface like a glacier cutting through the earth, sculpting the surface into its final, topographical form.
I want my paintings to evoke geologic time, evolutionary processes and metamorphosis. I am interested in the flux and flow of nature and want my painting process – applying, drying, scraping and reapplying – to parallel the natural processes of growth and decay, buildup and erosion, creation and destruction. I work on each painting until I create a world unto itself, where the light, space, and color are as convincing as the physical, real world.
My process is an enthralling struggle to create structure and clarity out of change and chaos. Ultimately, what I am after is a kind of transcendence. When the physical properties of pigment and oil melt away and become something else: fields, wood, stone, moss. My aim is to push paint to new limits, past descriptive mandates, in pursuit of Nature itself.
Can I transmit, through the medium of paint, the evolutionary processes of nature? Can a painting become a piece of nature and not just a facsimile of it? Can a work of art raise our consciousness about our current environmental crisis and inspire the notion that everything in the natural world is intrinsically and profoundly connected? Can I redefine what it means to paint a landscape during this era of environmental change?
With climate change impacting the environment in unforeseen ways, my work has taken on new meaning and purpose. I want my work to be a catalyst for understanding our delicately balanced ecosystems and inspire a love for nature. I want to make manifest–through the power of art–our fluid and interconnected world. Ultimately, I want to give the earth a voice and let it tell it’s story.