Artist Statement

My current paintings are wooden constructions that combine imagery from nature, animals, plants, and the human figure, with imagery from Tibetan Buddhist murals and scroll or thangka paintings. This group of paintings hang on the wall yet have a three dimensional aspect with cut and carved forms moving off the surface of the painting. The works are assembled in pieces, like a child's jigsaw puzzle, yet when put together create a dynamic whole with references both to the history of representational and illusionistic painting and to the physical presence of object and form in sculpture.

There are also echoes and hints of primitive art, particularly masks, as well as early Christian art. Some of the works are based directly on the lives of Buddhist saints. Other works are inspired by various deities in the Tibetan pantheon, some peaceful some wrathful. I am particularly interested in female saints, deities and goddesses called dakinis. The dakini is also related to broader creative and destructive energies of nature and the universe.

Perhaps the most vivid images in recent paintings are depictions of the charnel ground or cemetery in ancient Tibet. The charnel ground was both a physical place where corpses would be cut up and disposed of, allowing predators to feast upon them. It was also a place where meditation practitioners would go to meditate and contemplate death and impermanence. On a metaphoric level, charnel ground is a place where things manifest and dissolve. We experience this not only at death, but also moment to moment in our lives.

With painting, I attempt to express this momentary shifting in our lives. Within one painting forms inner penetrate, arise and dissolve, overlap, mutate and separate. Carved and sculptural elements surface and become flat and flat painted elements pretend to possess dimension. Animals, humans, birds, plants, and wrathful and peaceful deities are meshed and interact, dissolve and form.