My fascination with relationship, communication, personality, and the unconscious crystallized my career as a psychotherapist, took me all over the world, and led me deep into the emotional landscapes of self and others. At 19, however, as I embarked on my very first journey abroad, I was given a camera. Over the years, photography has provided a vehicle through which I could chronicle my passion and respect for people and place.
After years as a ceramist, I discovered painting in the ’90s, when I studied in Bali under the tutelage of two master painters, Pak Mokoh and Galuh. Then in a workshop taught by Holly Roberts I began painting on photographs. Combining these two medium seemed to open yet another door into the essence of my subjects. I remain hopeful that through my lens and a sensitive use of the brush and color, I am honoring the character, spirit, and struggle of those exquisite people I have been fortunate to meet on my travels.
I believe that my compositional decisions are informed by my work as a therapist—breaking through, or peeling away layers of context and content as the individual arrives in a place of clarity, where purpose and intent becomes knowable.
In my paintings I express both reverence and empathy for my subjects as I attempt to uncover unconscious material and bring it into focus. In 2000, the Chinese women I had photographed in 1982, many of whom had bound feet, inspired my first series— Chinese Women: Bound and Determined. The secret nature and pathos of their unique suffering, and the dignity with which these women carried their plight moved me. I wanted others to see them as I had. In order to highlight their humanity, I added oil paint to the photographs enhancing the colors and atmosphere surrounding and supporting each woman.
The Balinese series—Bali: On Sight/Insight—sprang two years later from my twenty-year connection with the culture and spirit of the people of Bali. The Balinese approach to music, art, and dance has been pivotal in my creative development. During the summer of 2002, I photographed and painted on site in Bali in the hopes of documenting village life and the complexity of the Balinese character.
My next series, Altered Egos: Halloween in Santa Cruz focuses on this beloved and joyous holiday and our innate desire to use our creativity to embrace and/or explore different dimensions of character and persona—our own, as well as others’. In the past two years, I’ve made a marked departure from these personal landscapes and have turned my attention to the American landscape itself. Inspired by a commercial plane flight over the salt flats of Utah, I have been painting aerial portraits, Window Seats, based on and incorporating photographs I’ve taken from window seats. Looking down on the Earth and seeing the design elements in nature, as well as those created by human intersection with nature, has been an exciting new arena.
And then in March and May of 2005 and again in January 2006, I traveled to New York City, where I’d lived as a student at NYU and each time photographed the underground. My recent series Subway Reflexions is a result of those three excursions, and hopefully blends my love of the city, its pace and its people, with my attraction to reflections, motion and mystery. In all my paintings/photographs, horizon, color, form and line interact to evoke emotional response, tapping into universal themes and archetypes. The environments I extend or those I create for my subjects are at once real and abstract, and hopefully shed new light on my subject, which reflects back on the artist and, in turn, on the viewer as well.