The cloudscape paintings are my emotional and intellectual response to changes we are seeing in our environment. Across the globe, we may remember 2023 as the summer of our atmospheric discontent. From devastating wildfires, extreme drought, and torrential rains to other radically changing weather patterns, we are experiencing a new environmental reality due both to natural phenomena and human caused climate change.
My work invites one to take a deeper look. Are we “fiddling while Rome burns?” and destroying the only home that gives us life? When looking more closely at my paintings, are the clouds naturally occurring or the aftermath of a manmade explosion with bits and pieces of wildlife and foliage blowing in the wind?
The title also implies the way I go about “fiddling” with found imagery: cutting and combining realistic images from magazines and other printed material, then morphing them into something entirely different and otherworldly. My goal is to encourage closer observation of the natural world hopefully kindling a stronger interest in our fragile ecosystem and the desire to protect it. Although the paintings carry a serious message, they have a decorative, ornamental, and peaceful sensibility much like the tranquility we find in nature. I found inspiration for this series of paintings in the period of Art History called Pattern and Decoration (P&D), an intense, avant garde movement originating in New York City that spanned the early 1970’s to mid 1980’s.
When the conquistadors first swept across South America in the 16th C establishing their wealthy empire, they saw hummingbirds for the first time and thought them so magnificent that they named them Flying Jewels. Unfortunately they destroyed the ancient civilizations that had inhabited the land for hundreds of years.
SOLD
30x20 inches, mixed collage on canvas (2018)
22x16 inches, mixed collage on paper (2019)
36x48 inches, mixed collage on canvas (2020)
