ARTIST STATEMENT

My work explores boundaries — the membrane between the visible and invisible, inside and outside, and the indeterminate in-between.

I work with fabric, handmade paper and wax, selecting materials for their skin properties: transparency, translucency and porosity. I make diaphanous, sometimes gilded wall hangings, paper mâché body parts, ephemeral pigmented handmade paper and encaustic paintings. Material becomes analogue for skin.

Trained as a figurative oil painter, the body and skin are never far from my visual consideration. For many years I painted larger-than-life portraits until I realized the topography and terrain of the skin was what interested me most.

I now investigate skin across multiple mediums and as a metaphor. It is a porous membrane through which the intensity of the physical outside world enters, and the internal world exits. This negotiation is where all the physical, emotional and psychic aspects of a person become visible.

Recently, lace has entered my practice. Skin viewed under a microscope appears as a series of interlocking, delicate and transparent fractals loosely held together through thread-like filaments — remarkably like lace. Historically prized in the 17th century as a luxury commodity, lace took on deeper personal significance for my mother, for whom it became a source of social and financial agency, sometimes at the expense of motherhood. She took great care in the cleaning and repair of often discarded cloth in more tender ways than she considered important for her role in caring for me.

This layering of the material, biological, historical and personal is characteristic of how my practice evolves.

My processes of cutting, tearing, sewing, scraping, gilding, and painting reinforce my physical connection with material. I utilize scale change-- making small things large and large things small, to disrupt expectations.

As example, in Fleur de Peau I enlarged a tiny lace fragment to larger-than-life scale using cheesecloth treated with polymer, painted a soft red ochre. The resulting fragile ephemeral wall hanging is accompanied by an ink painting of its shadow, grounding it in space.

In making visible the physical and psychic boundaries I experience as a human living in skin I want to reveal the internal emotional landscapes held within.