AQUIDNECK LAND TRUST SERIES
I began my Aquidneck Land Trust series in 2019 and it has grown to include over 26 paintings and prints. My intention is to describe and honor the farms, woods, parks and open spaces now protected in perpituity by the Land Trust. I hope these paintings will inspire hope in the viewer in the midst of the accelerating environmental crisis we are in.
I plan to have the locations of all these places written in as soon as possible. They are not literal descriptions, but illustrate my response to a Land Trust place and what lives and grows there. Paintings that have sold are available in prints.
Topo Map Series
In this series I use Topographical Maps to help describe a specific place. I collage a topographical map onto canvas, then work into the painting with acrylic paint and polymers, charcoal, block prints, stamps, pastels, tapes, sharpies, wires etc. so that what lives there becomes part of the landscape around them: where they live is who they are. Their Memory Maps are internalized and lead them to food and water and safety. Many are threatened with extinction, but they are resilient and they survive. Paintings of animals and their habitats include fox, buffalo, wolves, bears, coyotes and elephants. My “Self Portrait Map” and “Memory Map” are inspired by where I grew up. This place will always be one of the many “...complex or nuanced ways in which a sense of place might be a factor when forming identity.”
Reservoir Series
In this series I painted different local Reservoirs including the Newport Reservoir behind Easton’s Beach and Gardner Pond below Hanging Rock. These include ”At the Reservoir” done with Latex on Hardboard, as well as paintings on canvas, collage, iPad drawings and descriptions of various views at different times of day.
SHORELINE SERIES: THE Anthropocene
Whenver I walk along the beach or local shorelines, there are bound to be shards of plastic, shapes of plastic, colors of plastic mixed in with the endless pieces of sea life that wash ashore. I pick up the bright red bottle cap that catches my eye, a shard from a turquoise cup, a torn balloon, the yellow square of a price tag. Micro-plastics mix with micro- fauna, floating sheets of plastic lap up amidst the seaweed, horseshoe crab shells mix in with plastic netting. It is all co-mingled now. Small paintings help me clarify my intention: each one includes a scrap of litter and an image of sea life. I continue to experiment with materials, trying to describe what I see on the shoreline today. I started this series in 2018. It has grown to include 27 big and small paintings and is ongoing.
