PATHWAYS (2015)
In this series I am exploring the use of line, color and layering to create abstract compositions that are both complex and transparent, striving to create a visual vocabulary that points toward events and people that influence choices made over time and evokes a sense of wayfinding. The images at times suggest aerial landscape views or an imagined geography. Taking inspiration from the work of both Brice Marden and Agnes Martin, each piece is made of up layered networks of lines, both undulating and straight. The networks weave through the image, moving in relationship to each other and to areas and islands of color. My goal is to achieve a resonance between the layers and suggest an underlying
connection and coherence between apparently random paths of travel. My initial interest in this imagery was triggered by a family reunion during which I heard numerous meandering stories of lives lived and choices made. I was struck by the multiplicity of trajectories of those lives — my own included — and the myriad influences behind those choices. As the series has developed, I find myself reflecting more broadly — on what it means to “follow a path” or to “wander in the wilderness”, on the unconscious or only dimly perceived factors that affect our decisions and change our lives, on the extent to which our past determines our future.
For me, the series has expanded into a meditation on the subtle influences that guide us - hereditary, societal and environmental – as well as the way the influences morph over time. A creek bed becomes a flood plain, then an animal track, a hunting trail, a pioneer wagon cut and eventually an interstate highway. The pieces are mixed media on paper, utilizing watercolor ink, micron pen, charcoal and pastel pencil and gesso. Woodblock prints provide an additional layer of lines in some pieces. The subtle indentations of the lines, washes and woodcuts inform the path of each subsequent layer, creating a visual expression of the often unconscious or half remembered factors that guide us on our human journey.