"Altered Terrain"
Solo Exhibition Statement
September 29-October 30, 2010
The road of life has taken me from the volcanic deserts and farms of southern Idaho, through the rolling Kansas hills, into the northern Virginia suburbs where hardwood forests and small farms compete with shopping malls, homes and superhighways.
Once my paintings were o wild landscapes whose pristine beauty stopped me in my tracks. As I observed the land changing radically over the years, I began to draw and sculpt a different scene. Everywhere I see connections between an altered terrain and the often absent people who transform it.
Inspiration also comes from 17th century Dutch paintings of wealthy sea merchants (profiled largely above the horizon line) and the figures of Italian artist Arcimboldo (1526-1593) composed of fruits and vegetables, the very foods that sustain humankind. Likewise my drawings and collages are metaphors for American culture and commerce. Figures dominate some drawings and hide within others, becoming a composite of the world around me, and revealing associations that a viewer might not have seen before. I pair nooses with mega-coal-mining equipment, cross grave markers with a parking lot, and rubber duckies with live ducks. Small square collage drawings are succinct thumbnails of themes revealed in larger compositions.
Sculptures in the exhibit also reflect the effect of humans upon the land and its wild creatures. They are made from cast off detritus: wood, metal, glass, plastic and remains of animals: fur, bone, feathers. Textures, aging patinas and tool shapes recall a landscape that has come and gone. Remaining for centuries, however, will be the bits of plastic. They are truly archival and unable to decompose into recyclable elements
