In the beginning, all was water– a belief backed by science and held at the heart of many creation stories across cultures.

Water plays an important role in my work, if not always figuratively as the subject, then literally as part of my painting process. As I set out to begin this body of work, I allowed myself to let process be my guide. Rather than being “inspired” by a certain landscape or event or theme, I began with how I wanted the work to feel– poetic.

Lyrical, dreamlike, beautiful in an unconventional way, but perhaps illogical or incongruous.

 

Abandoning a more densely applied approach to painting, I circled back to my love of transparent layers of diluted paint. Watery acrylic applied sometimes with a quick, carefree action, allowing long drips to flow with abandon or taken more deliberately and carefully, the solution of water, binder, and pigment breaking apart slowly, lightly caressing and covering the surface instead of running downward. Continuing my pursuit of intuitively formed landscapes, I found myself often turning the panels upside down, so that the sky became water and water transformed to sky. It was in those actions that I was reminded of the creation stories– how multiple stories chronicle the way of the world’s beginning as the way of one body of water separating into two– a separation begetting a duality where there once was unity. 

There became an above and a below. Yet, water remains a significant element of both. And sometimes, as when rain falls heavily from the sky into the ocean, obscuring the horizon, the separation seems to disappear. Our bodies being two-thirds water as is the earth and sky, we are all submerged in and indistinguishable from our original source. 

As the fluid pigment runs down the surface, from sky to sea or lake and then back again, I’m reminded of the way water is connecting us all– to the earth, to our source, to every living thing.