Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Paintings, Drawings, Mixed Media in a Contemporary Style

Making marks with any medium is a very natural instinct for me. My interest is in responding to my subjects rather than producing representations of them. Making a gesture of a subject, whether it is physically in front of me or in my memory or psyche, is a way for me to capture it wholly. Details don’t usually grab me. But the movement, posture, mood, light, pattern, intervals, line, and color capture my imagination first. So my work is mostly intuitive…making lines and marks and shapes of color and then responding to what has appeared on the white surface by the movement of my hand. I treat the landscape and still-life the same way. What I perceive visually is just a suggestion of what I will draw and paint.

Having been born in New Orleans and grown up in South Louisiana, nature can’t help being a big part of my intuition. The Mississippi River, the marshes and swamps, fish, crawfish, shrimp, leaf patterns and textures, floral abundance, dripping humidity, and intense heat have made up my personal geography. Even today my backyard is my own private jungle garden, complete with goldfish, frogs, a myriad of birds, lizards, and an occasional snake or two. My place is sacred to me.