The Eye’s Joy: Paintings

Many of my paintings during the past decade have had their formal origins in the various gardens in my life, and I have drawn thematic material from within an intersection of poetry and those gardens as specific places. Although these various sources may not always be immediately apparent on the canvas, they are there nonetheless, filtered deep into my visual memory and into the instincts of hand, color, shape, and composition. I was raised with gardens and gardening, and continue to maintain a garden of my own. I draw and paint from it throughout the cycles of seasonal change, taking formal and organization ideas from it. And as a painter, I have given careful study to artists who worked with similar motifs, from Monet and Bonnard to Cy Twombly and Joan Mitchell. An element of kinship is perhaps inevitable.

I have always liked to test the familiar boundaries of artistic materials and forms, and my canvases are built from innumerable layers of paint, handled in a wide variety of ways, which create dense, textured surfaces that have the effect of rich inner illumination. Light, texture, the tactility of collage elements and their past histories — all join to give a feeling of life to the work. In a sense, they express the fecundity of the garden setting.

Nature and domesticity meet in a garden, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes at odds with one another. As the two forces intertwine in dynamic exchange, they suggest the symbolic coexistence of the natural and human worlds. This in turn yields a physical metaphor for the specific cultural background of the artist, on the one hand, and on the other, her individual creative instincts. A garden may also draws the gardener away from the demands of human society, into the flow of the natural world, an experience that can be related to the demands of art-making. I do not speak of inspiration. The relationship between artist and the garden landscape can be much deeper than that. It reflects a way of being in the world.

My current body of work is the Clothesline Series, a painting environment informed by a haiku by the poet Basho: Heaven and earth / are dressed / in their summer wear. This is an especially potent image for me, one that brings forth an array of memories and associations. With that in mind, I have attempted to capture the “spirit” of the clothesline as poetic space and as a significant cultural site. A clothesline can transform a public place, such as a city alleyway, into a personal, intimate, domestic one. On an open landscape, rows of dresses seem to mingle and even merge with the surrounding environment — hanging from a line, stirred by a breeze, bright in morning sun — inflecting its appearance and establishing associations with daily life. In its colors, patterns, and motion, a clothesline may also resemble a garden.

I also love the jewel-like hues of the Venetian Renaissance, and one of my goals for the series has been to achieve similarly striking effects of extravagant outdoor color. By the same token, I respond to those canvases by Edgar Degas that blur distinctions between ballet stage and landscape, or Bonnard, who merges interior and garden. I also seek something of the experience that occurs for me in the work of Andy Goldsworthy, as objects placed by the artist lose their edges and begin to blend into the surrounding outdoor world. Such is the eye’s joy.