I am self-taught, self-driven and have been seeking mentors to study with for the past forty years. Having taken classes through Santa Fe Workshops, Christopher James (Alternative Process) Bonnie Lhotka (tintypes and transfers), Atlanta College of Art for painting and drawing, Penland in NC and Anderson Ranch, my current challenge is shooting and manipulating with the iphone.I view the world in layers, stacking colors, textures, forms and stories onto each other as if one were walking through their day with blurred vision, not taking in specifics but piecing together various parts and overlapping them. Boundaries then become suggestions and interconnectedness forms the expression. Often I take parts of previously flattened layers to begin a new piece, so in essence some images have twelve years of textures and history. I begin with just a simple concept and then the work takes on a life of it’s own.A sense of structure and design is important of course but behind my shapes and colors, there is usually another order of meaning, however abstract that may appear. “I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.” Anais Nin |