I fell in love with poetry as a child – the ability of a few words to evoke a world of feelings. I recognized the importance of the space created by the non-linear narratives of poetry, the emptiness that allows the reader to conjure up meaning. When I became a visual artist, I worked to create visual poetry – works of art that evoke emotional responses and create spaces for a multiplicity of meaning without being tied to a linear narrative.

This journey has taken me through figurative and narrative work into abstraction and back again. I create in bursts of concentrated energy. Mark making is intuitive, emotional and free of judgement. It can vary from large scale to tiny, intricate to loose. I often create multiple printing plates that can be used singularly or in combination. I print them on papers of differing weights and colors. I coat some in beeswax, I tear and cut others. I strive to balance loose, rhythmic, painterly movements with methodical organization of color, line, space, shape and texture. Random marks become abstract evocations of weather, hinted at figures, loose architectural renderings that reference a physical reality or evoke emotional and psychological states of being.

I think of my art making practice as a real collaboration between my creative impulses and the techniques I love so much. I don’t think I could express myself the way I want without the intervention of the etched plate, or the digitally manipulated drawing. This process heavy sequence of building an image is vital to how I make my art. At each point in a process there is an opportunity for creative intervention, and I exploit the way an image transforms through each stage. It requires me to rethink the formal aspects of the image many times over and keeps creating opportunities for me to imbue the image with emotional weight and meaning.