Stripes have been my major focus for some time, and they continue to surprise me with just how much can be elicited from this simple form. Rather than static and limiting, they can almost feel as if they are alive and have their own unique persona. The challenge for me is how to perpetuate the variety of color and the variability of stroke without locking vertical stripes into an inert pattern. The stripes should undulate and commingle with each other but hold their individual power fearlessly. My time in the studio has taught me that you have to pay attention to take in what the stripes are offering. Exhibited as a grouping, the paintings in my series “The Hidden Life of Stripes” surround the viewer and demand attention. They wait to be observed. In their numbers, they are a community of stripedom, standing together to make their voices count and possibly overtaking the viewer with their strength.
The series title borrows from the book The Hidden Life of Trees written by a German forest ranger, who proposes that trees are sentient beings that cooperate with each other. Walking into the exhibit room loaded with stripes should give a sense of a different universe — a jumping-off point to experience them as something more than a motif. Each individual stripe is like one chromosome to an overall organism, whose very uniqueness is required for the whole to be formed and sustained. Unconsciously I give my stripes a quality by combining luminosity, opacity, translucence, and hue that they are breathing. My humanness somehow gets transferred into the painting. In my search for the perfect soulful stripe, I am reminded of my own hidden inner life.
Please check out the Hidden Life of Stripes Catalog
