ARTIST STATEMENT

I am attracted to both art and science, and enjoy exploring boundaries between nature and art, between representation and abstraction, between humans and other life forms. I am passionate about animals, especially birds, and the sounds, images and movements of animals in the natural environment. I use painting and drawing, digital photography, video, sound and web design, and my scientific knowledge and experience, to bring people into greater awareness of the natural world that surrounds us.

My paintings reflect forms from geology and biology. I enjoy making representational images of landscapes, animals, and flowers. I also enjoy the freedom of improvisational painting where I may start from a realistic image, but allow the painting to evolve through the changing relationships of colors, shapes, and movement, similar to a musical improvisation. Artists that have influenced my painting include Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and Morris Graves.

With digital media I am able to play with imagined encounters between animals and unlikely environments. For my MFA thesis project I created musical improvisations from birdsongs and designed a site-specific audio tour of an arboretum from a bird’s point of view to raise awareness about birdsongs using both fact and fantasy.