Artist Statement   CV/BIO

I grew up in Massachusetts where I developed a love for the ocean, the woods and the old homes and farms of New England. In my 15th year I was introduced to painting at the Warehouse Cooperative School in Boston, through my close study of art with Noboru Matsu. Deciding to pursue painting full-time, I attended the Massachusetts College of Art where I received a BFA in Painting in 1979. During my time there I studied with George Nick and Jeremy Foss, whose influence I still feel in my intense attraction to landscape painting. This interest has never waned.

In the years after art school, I married and raised a family while developing a business as a muralist and decorative artist. After making a living as a decorative artist for nearly twenty years, in 2000 I returned to my study of studio art, eventually stopping my work as a decorative painter and focusing my efforts on landscape painting.

In 2003 I found myself exploring the symbol of mandalas in my art. I found I had an almost overwhelming need to combine the imagery of mandalas, or Yantra patterns, with the landscape imagery that I loved so much. This opened up a path of visual, emotional and psychological exploration that I continue to pursue.

Eventually I deepened my study of mandalas and consciousness by exploring the writings of C. J. Jung and his followers, who also had undertaken a nearly life-long interest in the mandala symbol. During this past year I was amazed and excited to find out that the very location in Maine that I had been visiting as a painting retreat for the past six summers, and which I had used as a primary subject in several mandala landscapes (Bailey Island) was the same place a group of early Jungian analysts had spent their summers for several decades. This has felt to me like a synchronous connection, and has encouraged me to continue studying the writings of Carl Jung and the analysts of Bailey Island. This interest is now leading me to undertake a more formal study of psychology.

I presently work in oil, acrylic, encaustic wax, and occasionally watercolor. For me, painting continues to be an unending challenge and source of great connection, difficulty and joy.