Drawing for me is a meditative, repetitive practice. I experiment until I solve the puzzle of how to render the chaos one sees into a series of lines. The line that divides the page. The line that zig-zags up an evergreen tree. The circular line of a sidewalk, the edge of a house. Each line is a separate discovery.
I’ve always worried that I work too slowly. I often do 50 drawings before I start painting. But I have come to realize that this is the part I enjoy. I edit and refine. I am not trying to reproduce, even in an abstract way, a photograph. I am creating a vocabulary, a labyrinth of shapes. A stack of triangles becomes the shadows in a tree. A half-ellipse becomes a sheltering tree umbrella.
I like everything in the right place and to line up, to balance. It calms the chaos. I paint houses and trees because they are adversaries. I am telling the story of how these two forces live together. Houses want permanence. They are a pile of bricks and want to be left alone. Trees want change. They want to grow. They make more trees. They crack sidewalks and bring down chimneys.
For example, I walked by a little gray house on a gray day. There were five skinny trees growing up and around it. Their branches were swaying and playing in the wind. The forlorn little house was down below unable to join the fun. That story is a painting.
Another day, as I walked down the sidewalk, there was a big old tree with two limbs spreading out. As I glanced at it, it looked like those branches were making the blue house smile. And why wouldn’t it? The flowers were blooming, its bushes were budding. It looked beautiful. And the tree was helping by pointing it all out. That story is a painting.
When you look at my paintings, I am asking you to follow me through a labyrinth of strange shapes. Then when you go home, maybe you too will see your house sitting among dancing trees.
