Tendencies
My paintings and sculptures overlap and interact in such a way that I find it difficult to put them into neat categories. I prefer to group them in terms of tendencies. Some of these tendencies involve technique; others involve preferred subjects. There is, however, a uniting focus throughout all the work - my subjective experience of seeing. In portraiture, the marks that I make are hinged to the moments that I spend with my model. In painting and sculpture, the act and process of seeing is equally translation and interpretation. Even in more abstract works, I am reaching into the pool of my body's memories of things felt and seen.
For the purposes of this website, I have separated my work into four tendencies, some represent choice of technique and others represent preferred subjects: "Plaster hybrids", "A family of sculptures", "Portraits at home", and "My sister Jasmine".
Plaster hybrids
These works are oil paintings on cast, molded, incised, and carved plaster supports. Some of the pieces are a mixture of painting and relief sculpture. Others are highly textured and scratched. Some integrate sculpted plaster frames.
A family of sculptures
Here is a selection of sculptures alongside paintings and sculptures of sculptures. My sculptures have grown into an image-family that surrounds, protects and inspires me in the studio. They are together a geography of lives, my father, my friend Annie as a teenager in Philadelphia, ex-boyfriends, children, my own face as "The Marianne" (symbol of "la république francaise", sculpted when I was first in Paris working as a sculptor's assistant), and on and on. These sculptures inhabit my studio and are time and again the subject of new works, as I reinterpret them in drawing and paintings, on welded lamps and in new sculptures.
Portraits at home
Matisse said "A portrait is a quarrel." A few years ago when I made my first painting of a family group I realized both the truth of this statement and also that being able to withstand the quarrel is necessary to the making of a portrait from one's own perspective. It is the quarrel which allows us each a corner of subjectivity from which to claim some parcel of individual and artistic freedom. In these paintings, I too am a subject, both of the opinions that surround my unfinished work, and to the great gift that each individual gives me by posing for me.
If you would like me to paint your portrait please contact me via the inquiries page.
My sister Jasmine
I have been making paintings of my sister jasmine for the past four years. These paintings, mostly plaster hybrids, are part of our ongoing collaboration. I call it a collaboration because with Jasmine I have realized to what extent the character, or even mood, of the model is the expression of my painting and it is something I can only express when I am offered the time to observe and paint. I cannot make up her spirit without her there to share it with me. She lets me look upon her and describe what I see and feel without impediment and this in turn allows me to make paintings that express a spirit, her spirit, which is beyond my understanding.
Jasmine and I made a book together in 2008 with Jasmine's poems alongside my paintings of her sleeping and resting. It is called Outside the Garden and can be ordered from here. The paintings from the book were exhibited in Montreal in 2008 and Jasmine slept and performed her poems in a brass bed during the opening of that exhibit. You can see a short video of her performance over here.