Philosophy

Screams! …and Dreams

About a year ago I did three paintings of women; they were bitten by mosquitoes and screamed.  At the time I considered those paintings part of my “Women and Food” series as “women as food.”  But every time I walked into my studio my eyes immediately gravitated to those paintings—they seemed to have a life of their own.   So I made another, where a woman was being choked and screamed.  I loved painting that one as much as the previous ones, seeing the screaming figure emerge from the canvas.  Seeing the Scream emerge—I realized I wanted to paint Scream.  Who screamed, where and why, may or may not have mattered.  Painting the Scream mattered. So, here I am.

Why me, why now?  Maybe where I am in life I spend so much energy on being calm.  I am raising a toddler, a very sensitive boy, who doesn’t take my screaming very well.  I am married to a wonderful man, who doesn’t take my screaming very well either.  I can’t go around screaming at my friends—I don’t have enough to spare.  But I really want to scream!  Scream!  What a strange word.  I scream.  They scream.  You scream.  Look at us scream…

…And when you need a rest from all the screaming, look at us dream…

Women and Food

This series I often go back to.  It is about women and therefore about beauty.  Food staples (from fruit to bread and fish) represent both the external, giving a sense of place and time, and the internal, becoming a symbol for desire and fear, discontent and satisfaction.  One variation on this series is women with unnaturally large insects, with the implication of women as prey and therefore symbolically as object of appetite.  Another variation is women with seeds, where the symbolism is of fertility, potential, and awakening.

Women with Panties is a depiction of "modern" women; it is both a negative social commentary and portraits of fun, attractive, and desirable women, looking out from magazine pages, Web, and TV.

Russia is Us began many years ago as group portraits against the blue, red, and white of the Russian flag; today it includes many paintings of my whimsical and mysterious friends.

Jazz is a favorite subject. Emotional and improvisational, it possesses great potential for expression through color and brush stroke.

Portraits tell stories of people: their optimism and innocence, wisdom and contemplation, grace and complexity. They also speak about me, and how I see the world.