Minimalism has a quiet beauty that I’m drawn too. I have gotten a lot of variation in my work working with few elements, because the options, although at times subtle, amaze me. Staying within the self-prescribed elements allows for focus and surrender to the process that I need in order to progress in each work. So a seemingly small change in direction can actually be a huge leap for me. The paintings in the series “Curved” are such a formal and expressive departure.
The work sprang from a curiosity as to where I might take my walking lines, with curves slowly taking hold over a six-month period. I had already broken free of my groupings of vertical stripes, when I devoted a series of paintings with banded straight lines configured in a color field. The resulting angularity was a dominant feature and provided me with a natural alternative: what would happen if I started to bend the lines rather than fold them? Then the paintings took on a more emotional meaning and became more compulsive as I entered a period of personal upheaval.
While gesture as brushstroke had been a part of my use of medium, I found that curving the banded lines embodied gesture in a more complex way. Not simply evidence of the human hand, the lines as gesture interacted with each other in a way that even suggested narrative. I found that with the curves I also created different widths within the lines. They were naturally more sensuous, and I think that allowed for a freer play of how I laid down the pigment and where I went with them. In my painting, I have let pigments and color do most of the talking, because I revel in the material. A new intensity in my emotional life began to play out in all the variables newly afforded me, and the relationship of suggested figural elements visually communicated situations and feelings. The loops are far more involved than what is to be found in previous work. They appeared because they answered an unconscious need to have the curves interconnect and relate to each other almost like two individuals.