My artwork is fortified by three essential elements, vibrant color, luminous light, and repeated patterns found in nature. These elements unify my oil paintings and computer generated artwork and form a substructure that serves to magnify the unique concord found in nature.

I often think of life as a tight rope stretching across an expanse. Our inner strength enables us to walk forward across it. When this fails us, we fall. But in those moments when we prevail, we soar and float as though weightless and timeless. As a gymnast I learned that control of one's insecurities results in a powerful and balanced presence of body. Give into them and the body becomes uncertain and clumsy. Rarely is life this transparent. Many forms of tension manifest themselves in physical, spiritual, and emotional unrest. How does the physical contour of the skin reflect the soul of a material body? Through the use of tension and balance, and with the aid of transparency, translucency, and opacity I alter the perception of surface, form, internal and external space. My work is a comment on the flux of my emotions and attitude towards daily life.

This thesis focuses on space, the in-between-ness that exists amidst mental and physical experience. Pith explains personal attachments and rooting systems. The thesis continues with Blessing, narrating love then loss, and finishes with a recipe for making a tomato sandwich. Blessing is followed by Materialize, a collective view of cyclical learning and meandering paths. Finally, the paper concludes with a quirky Women and Swarovski encrusted skulls, which matter-of-factly lists artists (all of whom happen to be women) whose works I find particularly compelling; and also notes on general trends in art I find interesting in a much less obvious manner. The artwork in Lucidity attempts to manifest an ephemeral, mental space with clarity, light, and shades of white. Both the artwork and the written component have been heavily influenced by my own affirmations of elation, loss, and contentment.

In my artwork, I merge nature with typography. I use macro-level photography to capture details of nature, such as the pistils of a flower or the sensory hairs of an insect. I print enlargements and transfer these photos onto pages of poetic text about nature, or collage them onto canvas. Once transferred, I use multiple media to alter and enhance features of the photos. I intentionally obscure much of the text which allows me to place focus on the overall layout and design. The arrangement of lines of text and spacing of words is used to create a visual rhythm. The poetic script acts as a foundation or platform for presenting the often unnoticed elements of nature. In developing a piece, I use a wet transfer which allows me to obtain subtle textures and imperfections that occur from the process. To add visual interest and complexity, I continue to manipulate the surfaces with various media and marks. This approach helps to create a blending of text and image. Similar to reading a poem or observing nature, I want to engage the viewer in an experience of visual poetry.

Title from exhibition catalog.

Title from exhibition catalog.

Title from exhibition catalog.

Title from exhibition catalog.

Title from exhibition catalog.

Title from exhibition catalog.