Artist Statement

I was initially trained as a printmaker and in my current work I retain some of those practices.

I create suites of related images which can be shown singularly or together. When shown together decisions about placement and lighting can be seen as sequences of thoughts, which reveal themselves as themes over time. One of the strongest themes in my work is the ability of the human spirit to recover from the rifts and losses that occur in all lives.

I am inspired by Fantin-Latour, Dutch and Flemish floral compositions and the still lifes of Giotto, Van Eyck, Rachel Ruysch, Maria Van Oostervijck, and Memling. I scan and photograph actual flowers and compose them with decorative papers, my own lithographs, beads, bits of jewelry, and vintage glassware, as well as drawn and painted backgrounds done directly on the glass of the scan-bed. I work happily within the strictures set by the long history of still life, and actively use and celebrate the concepts of vanitas and memento mori.

I began creating scanned images by layering objects directly onto the glass of a scanner in 2006, when I attended a printmaking workshop and needed a quick way of making an initial image from which to create a photo-based printing plate. I began to use this method to create stand-alone images in 2010 and have worked in this media as well as in photography ever since.