Vineyard Landscapes
With my recent move to living on a vineyard, I have become interested in painting the vineyard through the seasons. I have a fascination for the old vines and how lyrical they become without their foliage during the winter season. I am drawn to the changing light and color throughout the year and how that plays on the hills and grasses surrounding our vineyard. I am working in acrylic on canvas and have also started to incorporate an encaustic method with scratching and layering my paints with wax to build up the depth and texture of my palette on the canvas.
Ceramics
Working in clay for me was literally born out a reaction to my professional work as a theater and film designer. I found that I was becoming more and more removed from the tactile quality of creating with my hands. I hand build all my pots from a very rough coil method, that is the basis of all African pot making. I often let the pot as it grows; determine its own shape, although I do draw my shapes from classical and sometimes more organic forms. With the decoration, I like to carve and scraffito my pots, as if drawing and I am interested in a negative positive design, often painting the pots with a dark slip and then carving into them to allow the natural color of the clay to show through. I also decorate with colored glazes that I paint on in a free painterly brush stroke scratching my design, and using waxes.
Los Angeles Paintings and drawings series
With the LA paintings series, I was interested in story telling through painting and drawing by exploring familiar everyday scenes which suggest a narrative. My subject matter is drawn from my fascination with the cross cultural diversity of contemporary urban society. I choose to paint in a descriptive style and whilst retaining a sense of humor and playfulness. I believe my creative background as a designer in both theater and film has developed my ability to observe my surroundings with a fresh eye. I enjoy being able to express myself imaginatively through my work as an artist.