RECENT WORK
“Come Hither,” “Clivia Unbound,” “The Mind’s Garden,” “What to Do?”, “Flight”
Since 2017 I have been using the lower, dried-up section of an ancient clivia plant as the source for what has become 5 bodies of related work. The section is made up of the papery parts of cut off dead leaves and worm-like rootlets jutting out. In retrospect, I see that working on paper with my plant has helped me me adapt to difficult changes in my life. Over time I became improvisational in my work and accepted unpredictability and not knowing in my life. And after a hiatus, I could return to art-making, as a person in her 80’s.
The “Come Hither” drawings, using dark brown pen, are closely cropped, compressed images, built up with linear marks. They seem both floral and papery, yet also sharp and secretive. There is invitation and seduction, and at the same time menace and danger. There is also a pleasing ambiguity about what one is looking at. I am drawn to these qualities. The work has a dark feel to it, with conflicting feelings embedded. Those feelings are reactions to both the actual source material, and to the emotional impact of earlier stages of my husband George’s 9-year dementia journey.
Subsequently, with the “Clivia Unbound” series, I explored using two colors on either side of semi-transparent Duralar, along with the white of the page, not to describe space, but to conceptually establish color areas for potential print making. The resulting artwork is more abstract, open, and flat that the “Come Hither” drawings.
During 2018 and 2019 I had days of collaborative printing with master printer, Carolyn Muscat. The imagery is freer, lighter, and improvisational. I played with it, mixing things up, taking risks not taken before. We printed many layers, and I included hand painting. The results conjured up “The Mind’s Garden” to me, giving me joy. It’s not clear to me where these images reside — are they only in the mind, do they exist out in space, under water? I don’t know.
The “What to Do?” series adds black as a color, which brought back a tension I liked in the “Come Hither” works. My process in Carolyn’s print shop, and back in my studio, was a similar process to “The Mind’s Garden” monoprints, so different from most of my previous practice. The unpredictability and not knowing of these pieces excited me because they looked like something I never could have imagined ahead of time.
“Flight,” from 2022–2025 is most recent; high flow acrylic on paper. These, too, have botanical references to the old clivia plant, or to roots seen in the Boston Public Garden during Covid walks. Covid and the final years of George’s life, and 2023 death, were stressful and unpredictable, as was reassessing my life, learning the challenges of aging, and living alone. Intermittently I got back into my studio and used the not knowing approach of the 2019 monoprints to paint on paper. I picked up my pace in 2025. After each layer or action, my question was “what next?” Again never could I have imagined the final artwork! This process, and the repetitive mark making I do, give me joy, challenge, and a sense of freedom, for which I am grateful.