| January 7, 2023 |
| Show Title: The Wave and the Water |
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| My paintings come together like a puzzle. I start with an underlying geometric pattern and some ideas
about the color palette. I know how I want the painting to behave: the movement I want to create
within the painting and how I want it to resonate with the viewer. My work is to manage the painting
color by color, shape by shape, balancing the lights and darks, the vibrant colors and the greys, to
creates a visual field that draws the viewer’s mind out of herself and into the painting. |
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| This series of paintings are of mandalas, which are circular paintings intended to represent the entire
cosmos, the seen and the unseen. They are not mandalas in the strict sense of using Buddhist or Hindu
iconography, but they are intended to function both as paintings and meditative objects. They have a
physical three-dimensional presence that occupies space and gives them weight, but they can also be
experienced as an immersive space where physical barriers between the viewer and the painting
dissolve. While I was painting this series of paintings, I was reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “The Heart
of Buddha’s Teachings” and I came across a description that fit my experience of the paintings. |
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“When we look at the ocean, we can see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave
can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower or
longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of
water. While living the life of a wave, it also lives the life of water. Water is the ground of being
of the wave.” P.124 |
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| It struck me that the water, the “ground of being”, of my paintings is the moment of immersion when
the mind becomes the painting melding all those describable individual colors and shapes into a
wholistic, unconditional experience of connection and unity. My hope is that these paintings elicit
feelings of joy and peace. |
