GREEN ABUNDANCE
Color is central to my art. Color startles, it stimulates. Color reels us backwards into memories; it teases out emotions. Color has the power to move us influencing how we view the world. The reductive, lush paintings in Green Abundance are intended to reveal the deep nature of green and its associations to place, to spirit and to the planet.
I had been painting the color blue influenced by the seas and sky for 8 years when I applied and was subsequently accepted for a ComPeung Artist Residency. I choose Northern Thailand as I wanted to immerse myself in the color green to move away from the open ethereal blues and feel the earth and groundedness.
ComPeung provided a rich and fertile place to immerse myself. There are many layers of different life forms teeming within its environs. To capture more of these layers I expanded beyond oil painting to videos, photographs, poetry and sculpture. The exhibit that evolved from my residency includes over 40 pieces of art that form an integrated visual feast.
There is a bit of a ying and yang to this body of work. Confronted with so much that is beautiful, ample and good I was nudged to think about the opposite, about inequities, and the disproportionate distribution of resources. The poetry I created for Green Abundance references some of these dichotomies. The beauty of the work is intended to draw people in where they can then contemplate the deeper thoughts embedded in the work