A Sense of Order

Leedy-Voulkos Art Center
Kansas City, Missouri
Sept 3-Oct 30th 2010

Opening First Friday Sept 3rd 6-9pm

I make art because it is a tangible, immediate way to process my life and what interests me visually and intuitively. Author Joanne Harris in the book Chocolat describes "a way of mapping out the random patterns of our trajectory". This is what my art does for me, it creates a sense of order to a nonsensical existence.
A range of color and value and texture reflects my changing moods.
Materials mixed, accessible and affordable, mirror my modus operandi.
Pattern calms me. It is a familiar meditation to center my soul, focus my mind, and relax my body.
Images of iconic, universal, striking, labyrinthine women: that’s who I am.
Small, intimate drawings within large, graphic installations. That’s me, too.
These are elements and subjects that I continue to explore even as I travel, see more art, meet more artists, and develop my web of experiences and relationships.
All the work is ultimately self-exploration, self-portrait.
I could pretend that I make art for causes, for other people, to further the field. But it’s for me. If you know me, you know I’m not much of an actor.
I believe life is luscious and to be explored through every pore, in a very visceral way, no regrets. And so art.

Ireland

Hold me now, oh hold me now
Till this hour has gone around
And I gone, on the rising tide
For to face Van Diemen's land.

It's a bitter pill I swallow here
To be rent from one so dear.
We fought for justice and not for gain
But the magistrate sent me away.

Now kings will rule and the poor will toil
And tear their hands as they tear the soil
But a day will come in this dawning age
When an honest man sees an honest wage. -U2

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.
James Weldon Johnson

In Amsterdam the water is the mistress and the land the vassal. Throughout the city there are as many canals and drawbridges as bracelets on a Gypsy's bronzed arms.
Felix Marti-Ibanez

Belgium

The Ghent Festival promises "pop music, folkrock, rock 'n' roll, hiphop, jazz, R'n'B and lots more on all the squares in the city centre." There's theatre, comedy, sightseeing, exhibitions, boat trips on the river Lys. And there's always that fine food (and beer!) that Belgians are famous for...

Paris

As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris. -Friedrich Nietzsche

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian. -Victor Hugo

I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles. -Cole Porter