ORGANIC FORMS IN A GEOMETRIC STRUCTURE

For several years beginning in 1983, I painted organic and sensual landscape, plant, or abstract forms moving against and through a geometric structure.  Eventually, collage elements of torn paper were added.  Edges were an important design element and sometimes the edges were a painted illusion rather than actual edges.  The images in these paintings were partly from my imagination and partly from nature.  Over time, the paintings became increasingly three dimensional with several layers of collage.  Then in 1988-90, I painted several pieces that actually moved out into space, with the paper either folded or curved.  

PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY TRAVELS

Beginning in the late 1980s, my husband and I traveled annually to Great Britain or Austria.  We took many walks in the countryside on the public footpaths that wound through back roads and farmers’ fields.  Images of the rolling hillsides, castles, rivers and other beautiful scenery began to appear in many paintings, along with more abstract elements.  Later, while the paintings were still simplified and somewhat abstracted, they became pure landscape. Because we continued to travel over many years, I continued to dip into this rich resource for paintings while also working on other series.

WESTERN ISLAND ROCKS

In 1965 my husband and I purchased Western Island, off the Maine coast.  It is seven beautiful acres of rocks and trees about one half mile from Corea Harbor. The following summer, we built a small cabin on Western, and later we expanded it and also built a smaller cabin that I used as a studio.  Over the years, many works were created in that space.  In 1992, I began to paint the massive granite rocks that form the entire island and underlie the earth and trees.  I delighted in the rounded, voluptuous shapes of the rocks and how the shadows created shapes of their own. I loved how the rocks came together and touched or almost touched and the spaces between.  Even without the presence of actual figures, these works to me are very feminine.  

THE TOPIARIES: FORM AND SHADOW

In the early 1990s, I visited Longwood Gardens, near Philadelphia and was struck by the topiary garden with its imposing geometric shapes. I loved how the sometimes rounded, sometimes straight and pointed aspects of the trees interacted with each other and how the shadows intercepted the spaces between.  While the island rock forms were feminine, I saw the topiary tree and shadow shapes as being both masculine and feminine.  The pointed shadow forms often thrust into the sunny spaces between the trees in a mysterious or even potentially threatening way.

STONE HILL

For nearly fifty years, I lived in a beautiful area of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, locally known as “Stone Hill.”  In 2000, I began to paint the woods and boulders of my immediate landscape.  Here is what I wrote about the experience of the woods at that time:

I walk out my door, across the yard, and enter a landscape of boulder-strewn woods that the Lenni Lenapi once held sacred.  It is an old woods of many species—oak, maple, hemlock, hickory, ferns and wildflowers—and rocks of igneous diabase.

I sense that these huge boulders which were once molten are still evolving.  Cracks, like veins, indent their surfaces and will over time split the rocks apart.  Indeed, neighbor rocks with shapes that once fit against each other are evident in many places.

I am drawn to the woods to observe the small dramas of tiny ferns emerging from fissures in the rocks with barely enough soil for sustenance, and the larger dramas of fallen trees brought down by storms or old age.

I am drawn to the woods in late afternoons in autumn when the sun-glow on tree trunks creates zebra-like shadows, and in the springtime when the soft chartreuse haze of new growth is on the branches.

I am drawn to the woods to smell that certain smell of autumnal decay that pierces my soul with the remembrance of childhood shuffling through crackling leaves.

I am drawn to the vernal pool and to the creek to see the overlapping patterns of tree reflections and shadows on the water and to watch the frogs leap off the bank.

I am drawn to the ever-present story of death, decay and rebirth and to the mystery, power and beauty of the woods.

ROCK DIPTYCH II
1993, Acrylic on Paper
35” x 14”, Collection of the Artist  

MOONSCAPE, 1988, Water Color, Gouache
122” x 30”, Collection of the Berman Museum of Art

 

FROM THE EARTH, 1983
Water Color and Gouache
 18” x 18”, Collection of the Berman Museum of Art

ON THE WAY HOME FROM TADDINGTON, 1991
Acrylic on Paper, 16” x 24”, Collection of the Artist

 

PATH DOWN THE MOUNTAIN, 1996
Acrylic and Pastel on Paper, 26” x 26” Collection of the Artist

 BETWEEN THE ROCKS 1995, Acrylic on Paper, 20” x 20” Collection of the Artist

STONE HILL OCTOBER I: SUNLIT, 2002
Acrylic on Canvas, 36” x 36”, Collection of the Artist

ELEMENTS, 1989, Water Color and Guache on Shaped Paper, 20” x 33”
Collection of the Berman Museum of Art

 

AUSTRIAN AUTUMN V, 1998
Acrylic and Pastel on Paper, 37” x 37” Collection of the Berman Museum of Art

 

TOPIARIES: FORM AND SHADOW VIII
1997, Acrylic and Pastel on Paper, 39” x 31” Collection of the Artist

TOPIARIES: FORM AND SHADOW DIPTYCH, 1999 Acrylic on Two Canvases 48” x 72”, Collection of the Artist  

STONE HILL SERIES XIV: SHADOWS AND REFLECTIONS, 2001, Acrylic on Canvas
48” x 48”, Collection of the Berman
Museum of Art