Artist's Statement

The purpose of all art is to communicate, to move the spirit, to touch the heart.  As a painter and sculptor, my most authentic message remains visual, not verbal.  Yet I will attempt to convey in words what drives me to express myself as a visual artist.

As a child , I was continually fascinated with color, line and form.  After years of formal art training, I still seek to maintain that childlike sense of wonder, openness and playfulness.  That is why I enjoy sharing my time and efforts with young people in my art classes - I  reconnect with the child in me who finds in art more joy than work.

The sheer physical labor involved in large steel and stone pieces is offset by the deep pleasure I feel from doing what I love.  There are always built-in doubts and frustrations in the process of bringing an idea into tangible reality.  Yet I am often rewarded in a single breakthrough moment, a spontaneous "happening", in which the piece becomes more than I could have originally anticipated.  Such experiences fuel me to continue on, to hone my skills, to push my personal frontiers.

I have always enjoyed working in a variety of mediums and find many materials to be grist for artistic expression.  Yet my abiding passion is for stone.  I relish working during the summer in Vermont's Carving Studio and bringing home more marble and more skills to use in my own studio the rest of the year.  I confess I am afflicted with what is known among sculptors as "stone fever".  It is the absolute compulsion to search out and shape that most ancient medium and product of the earth itself.  I feel honored to be thus compelled.  It is a privilege to handle a primal, elemental material already possessed of such natural beauty.  In the yielding of the stone to the sculptor's hands, an alchemy takes place in which one's spirit is at once humbled and exalted.  While working with stone, I desire to be worthy of  my material - originally God's own handiwork.