Artist’s Statement 2024 

Like visual poetry, my paintings work on different levels; they hold varying layers of meaning, depending on the sensibility and visual experience of the viewer. Starting with a specially made wood panel, I construct each piece using an experimental process that I invented and have developed over the years. I apply a coat of plaster of Paris just as it sets and I make the surface rough and pitted. I then incise scuffs and other random marks into the surface with various tools. My work is abstract,  but  it is also “representational” in that it replicates sections of time-worn walls with imprints of their history.

With continuous painting and overpainting, I have a dialogue with the messy raw material, aiming to create from it a composition that works aesthetically, embodying balance and harmony. This is a metaphorical way of lending meaning to the random mental and physical scars we all experience in life, to a greater or lesser degree. Some marks, like experiences, are erased/forgotten, others defy that process and can never be erased/forgotten. Painting the countless successive layers, like the annual whitewashing of the ancient walls of Greek island houses, speaks of the passing of time and the workings of memory/forgetting.

As the work progresses,  I create “openings”, often evoking doorways or windows. These illusions of deep space lead to reflection and intimations of a mystery beyond  the tangible surface.