Aitutaki, Pacific Painting

Artist Statement My work is somewhere between abstract and completely non-objective. At times there seem to be recognizable images in my paintings, but these images lack definite boundaries and oscillate between possibilities. I am interested in the tension that occurs when perception is not absolutely clear. I like images that are ambiguous, for example, those that appear simultaneously vast and minute or distant and close. I utilize both a control of the medium and an allowance for the accidental. Shifts of the image occur while I work and become part of the finished piece. The completed painting is my response to the unsettling relationship between random acts and carefully planned decisions. Also, with each work, I try to balance the physical properties of the materials used and the metaphorical content of the image. With the ideas of ambiguity and perception in mind, I have also been investigating how meaning can be found where it is not intended. Totally random marks of paint can seem to be images of real things, like finding pictures in the clouds.