If The World Should End In Fire (Just Remember Red, Red Robin) 2008
This was the only painting I did during my difficult pregnancy. A volcano in disguise (made of peaceable sands) is at the center, along with a wheel of symbols. On the wheel’s left half, the symbols are all various representations [according to Me, or various mythologies and traditions around the world throughout time] of Warning: tidal wave, fire, arrowheads, leafless tree, rope, the Hindu hand gesture signifying Warning. On the right are representations of Blessing: wood, a snake, bow and arrow, breastie shapes, blossoming tree, the Hindu hand gesture that signifies the granting of a blessing by the God present. On the left panel of the triptych is a housebound plant weathering winter. On the right is a winter sunrise with leafless poplars. I, and my baby, almost died in childbirth. But we didn’t; we are both healthy. I think of Frida Kahlo’s What the Water Gave Me, and of the way she painted her pregnancy that ended in tragedy.

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Landscapes, 2007 - ongoing
For years I have been thinking about translating the earthly landscape I occupy into layers of color, and have only recently begun to attempt it. Maybe I resisted because it has certainly been done many times before. But I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t help it. Like a cross-section of sediment, each color represents a strip of information sandwiched between other strips. This view of the landscape emphasizes the hugeness of earth and sky, and minimizes the layer people occupy in between. This thought is comforting to me, and I do these paintings almost as a meditation.

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Waltzing Me All The Way Home 2007
The basis for this body of drawings is my romantic notion of Paris, held since I was about seven years old. I mean for it to be a kind of love song both to Paris and to all such childhood infatuations that carry into tempered adult longings. Chunky colored light bends around piles of faint bricks while wispy threads stroke pipes on fire coming out of the Eiffel Tower.

The title Waltzing Me All The Way Home is borrowed from (or, respectfully stolen from) the song of the same title by Stephin Merritt. Odetta, who sings Merritt’s song, told Merritt that she imagined the song was about two black, gay soldiers in World War II. While this is not the meaning Merritt intended, her interpretation rests profound and quiet, like the song itself. I find some metaphorical truth in her interpretation; as though I, as an American, and Paris are impossible lovers in an impossible world. The song encapsulates a sense of pleasant gratitude as well as sadness and acceptance.

You were a soldier from the war,
waltzing me all the way home
I'd never seen your kind before,
your every word was a poem
Thank you for giving me reasons for living,
more reasons than I'd ever known
Thank you for giving me new worlds to live in
and waltzing me all the way home

Now that you're just a memory,
waltzing me all the way home
I hope they treat you tenderly in London, Paris and Rome
You'll find a lover who looks like your mother,
For heaven's sake don't be alone
And I'll find another lover who looks like your brother,
But never another for waltzing me all the way home

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Costa Rica Revisit 2006
This series of paintings is my attempt to re-experience an event I witnessed in Costa Rica while on my honeymoon in 2004. It was too good to be real. I was sitting on the beach when I looked up and saw a red pickup truck with speakers and people piled in it with latin music coming out. Behind the truck there were local people from the town in their Sunday Best walking in a procession. Little girls in white dresses were being towed in carts carried by bulls with flowers around their horns. And in the middle there was a large, chipped and cherished plaster statue of Mary in a cart overflowing with greenery pulled by blonde cows. In the paintings, the red pickup truck is filled with breasties squirting milk, and Mary is a giant cake with yellow frosting.

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In Place: Southeastern U.S. 2006
I did these paintings outside on friends' porches in North Carolina and Georgia, and on the beach in South Carolina. Focusing on the physical landscape was one way I found to appreciate the South, during a time of "Red State" vs. "Blue State" political angst. I'm hoping to continue this project during future trips out there.

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Berlin Paintings and Drawings, 2005
I lived in Berlin for four months in 2005 as an Artist-In-Residence at the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft. The work I produced that Summer in that gloriously HUGE studio features big and broad the river Spree and yellow fields seen in rural Germany. Misplaced tram tracks and hot pink graffiti meet as postindustrial orphans in a heavy white space. Poplar trees shake their leaves in warm wind and abandoned yellow brick buildings maintain a stoic stance.

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Dublin Paintings and Drawings, 2005
For four months in 2005, I had the amazing experience of living at the Irish Museum of Modern Art as an Artist-In-Residence. A former Veteran's Hospital from the 1800's, the white stone, castle-like museum building became a primary character in the work I did there. Winter grays, greens and blues soften crumbling bricks, tongues (wanting to eat everything up), homemade industrial pipes with fire coming out, and squirting breasts heralding Spring.

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Statement Drawings 2005
Quite different from anything else I've done are the "Statement" drawings, with which I am seeking to make a sincere statement using a visual language. These drawings have as their centerpiece various hand gestures that in Hindu traditions signify something particular when a god or goddess takes that pose. One gesture signifies that the god is granting a blessing, another issues a warning. Because many coming to view these drawings might not know the meaning of these gestures I have made the titles as specific as possible to reveal information I have regarding them. These drawings are particularly political and personal, as I attempt to use them as sentences composed with images rather than words; which is why their compositions are somewhat sentence-like. A warning gesture is buffered symmetrically by tidal waves; bandaids lace the border. Not all of the marks within these "sentences" are translatable into text, and so the viewer must rely on their own understanding of a purely visual vocabulary in order to interpret meaning.

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