I strive to evoke an Eastern sense of balance between fragility and strength by using a system of highly structured intricate abstraction. Despite exacting and often tedious methods I work for a spontaneous result that inhabits an ambiguous realm between the visible and the invisible, the logical and the intuitive, the representational and the abstract.
The measured, stage-by-stage process of making a print allows me to adjust and fine-tune my images over a long period of time. In contrast to the slow pace of my printing process I simultaneously work out ideas quickly using collage and drawing. Recycled information from earlier works generates new outcomes as I layer and weave together disparate ideas.
Implicit in my work are stories waiting to be told. I find conceptual parallels and formal connections to Japanese narrative picture scrolls that I have ardently studied in museum collections and in reproduction. Their stories are often evasive, subtle, and fleeting. Images press out toward the frame as secrets hover and stories unfold sequentially over time. A severity underlies some of the scroll imagery but it dissolves into luminous tracings, rhythms, and lightness. Linear structures always remain clear and forceful. Echoed in my work is a continuous play of opposites – often found at the heart of Japanese aesthetics.
