Meet the Mid-Century Modern Artist

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Each person constructs the means to organize the input presented by the world. Visually, I organize my paintings in a geometric way, as though the subject is being seen through a pattern. Textile patterns were my original focus - the geometry of needlepoint, stitchery and quilting.

After a few years of living in Palm Springs, a different kind of geometry presented itself to me. The Palm Springs area can boast of having a unique variety of Mid-Century homes that feature a "brise soliel" - a cement block wall, with patterned spaces that allow air to circulate, while preserving a degree of privacy behind the wall. Each individual block may have part of a geometric shape, and when blocks are cemented together, the partial shapes combine to make larger geometric shapes. The painting's images are seen "through" these neighboring blocks of color.

I build my canvases the way these walls are built - block upon cinder block, covering the painting's surface. The shape of the canvas is the same as the shape of each individual concrete block, and an echoing rhythm is established. Color control is important - many pieces need thirty unique colors, much as I try for simplicity. The point of view can shift in many ways that interest me - from looking at the wall, to looking through the wall, to purely geometric block and color interplay.

Biographically speaking, I was born in upstate New York and have lived in Illinois, Massachusetts and California. Periods of full-time painting were necessarily sandwiched between jobs in retail (California College of Arts & Crafts, department stores) advertising (agencies, Macy's), and in event coordination (Palm Springs Art Museum). I have been painting full-time since 2012.