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Artist’s Statement
These works represent a continuous love and exploration of the landscape. Old photographs become the starting point for a series of mixed-media collages that use the landscape to develop an image.
Each photograph is a memory of my travels, but not to exotic places. Images of far away excursions never translate well into a work of art for me, they lack the right combination of color or texture; a too alien landscape without any sense of emotional connection. The choice of images for my work always returns to the eastern mountains and seashores visited continuously over many years, from family car trips, backpacking excursions in the mountains of New Hampshire, to vacations at the seashore and most recently, visits to my garden.
The process of producing my work, through the tearing and cutting of paper, alters the original photographic images and transforms them into something new, distilling the landscape into form and color. In spite of these changes, the connection to its origin is what gives my images value. Without the sense of place and time, my work would no longer have meaning for me.
Painting or drawing en plein air, as the Impressionists did, is not my goal, the goal is to transform the landscape into something new that may only hold a small connection to its source. Each step in the process brings me farther from the source material. Rather than trying to match the photograph or even the original location, clues are taken from the photo image: distorted colors, high or low contrast, or the graininess of the image. To reach the final goal, to have the piece stand on its own removed from the original photograph, shapes are refined, colors are added or subtracted, decorative elements are added. In spite of the progressive remove of the image from the original source, the link to its origins are still there, even if only through interpretation.