Mother's Minerals No. 4, 2022 Painting

June 2021 My method is to layer wet over dry. I like to paint slowly and mindfully, as a meditative practice. My process is to spend time in the action of observation in nature and then in the ritual of making. I have worked on a series of medium and large pieces over a period of ten years. The series is Plant, Animal, Mineral. The process of layering oil, wax, metallic leaf is analogous to the passage of seasons in nature and a piece doesn't feel quite complete unless I have been with it over a period of time, sometimes years. Developments may happen, discoveries may surface over time and with a patient hand that would not happen otherwise. In these current paintings I am using silver leaf and gold leaf. In the process of creating, I am cultivating patina on the silver. The edges sometimes "paint" themselves into a pattern of tarnish that is naturally beautiful. In several silver leaf pieces, I am allowing the patina time to darken. In some areas of the new small mineral works, I cover the patina with varnish when it reaches an optimal expression. There is not one final image to these metallic paintings, because the light dancing across the surface is always changing. They are reflective, the surface of the painting is connected to all that surrounds it. This is one of the most magical aspects of working with gold, silver, brass and other composite metals. Transmutation, like the alchemical paradox is part of the experience of creating, it is a search for an elixir, a visual elixer. May 2020 ARTIST STATEMENT Ornithology: in honor of the feathered ones who inhabit the places along the corridors of migration in New Mexico where I reside. The image of the wings of a Sandhill crane was painted from actual wings, found in a migratory sanctuary lying in a field like the wings of an angel. They were attached to a clean breast bone, but no other signs of the bird were in plain sight. I came upon them walking through a field just at the end of winter’s sleep, in February, after the Sandhill cranes flew north for their spring mating rituals. Emptied of the magnificent flocks of snow geese and cranes, I was walking through the fields somewhat forelorn that the cranes had gone, when I came upon the wings of a Sandhill crane.