Artist Statement

The world is trying to move forward and break free of the virus and fear. People are trying to regain their cheer. We have a nostalgia for the past and how we used to live. Even our democracy has been up ended. We recall when we were able to travel freely, mingle and meet at a restaurant without masks, and gather in groups without a care in the world. Our lived world longs for a return to another place and time or what the writer and art critic Svetlana Boym calls reflective nostalgia. As she said, reflective nostalgia manifests in reconstructing our past, in longing and loss and proposes to build and patch up any memory gaps, sometimes in a positive and meaningful way. 

I wish to rebuild that carefree past or at least the idea of that. Paintings in this show that nod to yesteryear but still live in today and bring me joy are based on two art works by the painters Dirck de Bray and Jan-Frans van Dael, Dutch and Flemish painters of the 1600s and 1700s respectively. Autumn Choir (aft de Bray), was created with more vibrancy in colors and I used less florals than his original Still Life with Flowers.

Efflorescence (aft van Dael) was also created to remember the great painter Jan-Frans van Dael. Beauty is a centering energy. 

Another work, a drawing in graphite entitled Tea Tree/For Toni, was created to remember my cousin Toni who passed away in 2015 from illness. It is a tribute to her, her children, her brother and sister, and her extended family and friends. It's a reminder that what was once devastating can be better with time. I think we have to remember this. I didn't even know at the time I took a photo of this tree outside her home in Southern California that it was a tea tree that has healing properties. In 2022, it was time to draw this tree and share her memory with the world.

One last piece of writing to consider. As the late writer Joan Didion said: 

"I'm not telling you to make the world better…. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it." —UC Riverside commencement address (1975).