Artist's Statement

I am fascinated with the complexity of the human condition, with connection and relationship. My paintings originate from my place in a large, old southern family - my ties to it, and my struggles with it. God and family are central in the traditions of my southern family, and the entire drama of the Old Testament is acted out periodically, with the appropriately accompanying comedy, tragedy and irony.

The people I paint, while they represent family members that are my own, are inspired by the people I find in old black & white photographs salvaged from flea markets and estate sales, and lately, even in pop imagery from magazines and advertisting.

I am also influenced by the psychology of Carl Jung, who talks about the archetypal imagery of the unconscious. My paintings begin with something I am drawn to intuitively in the original image, or often in a mixture of imagery. Then I trust the power of the images to change from the original photograph to a completely different form, and only then do I know what originally attracted me to the image. Collective memory seems to reveal itself to me more often; for example, I painted two white houses, which was new imagery for me, inspired by Gaston Bachelard's book, The Poetics of Space. The houses look very much alike, and I painted them because I simply liked the shape, only to find two, subsequently, in studying my family's history, that look just like them - places my grandparents lived. The continuing house paintings seem to carry on the family theme, dealing with the spaces family leaves, or inhabits. Often my original reasons for painting may be to explore the healing I need from the painting my own reality, but in the end, often I hope they can be enjoyed for simply sensual reasons; for color and energy and shape.

Aside from the pathos and wildly comic education my family affords: three children, four siblings, four step siblings and many more, my education also includes four years of Catholic boarding school in Asheville, NC in the sixties, and a degree in Fine Arts from a small Catholic college in Miami. The irony begins here since the matriarch of the family, my 87 year old mother, is not Catholic but staunchly fundamentalist charismatic Christian.

Alice Neel and Flannery O'Connor are my artistic heros. Alice Neel's work is brave and raw and utterly honest, and I am continually awed by the genius of Flannery O'Connor's short stories - her razor sharp wit, her deep spirituality. She said that our art must come from our own country, the place we know, thus inspiring this work.

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