Artist Statement

In my mixed media collage paintings, I depict hybrid characters and creatures, exploring the place of animals in the human imagination during this time of rapid environmental change. I work with a wide range of current, extinct and/or imagined animals and fauna, with an emphasis on birds and avian life forms. Through my art process, I connect with the reality that we are not just interconnected with animals, we are animals.

My process involves trying to access the place of dreams, the nonlinear, open-ended, mysterious place, where the conscious mind is not in charge. “Animals wake up the imagination,” said James Hillman in Dream Animals. “You see a deer by the side of the road, or geese flying in formation, and you become hyper-alert…animal dreams can do this too…As we get more into imagining, we get more animal-like….”

The juxtaposition of paint and collage in my work gives a sense of altered vision. This “collaged state of mind” – the dialogue between the real and the surreal – is what I look for. Ever-present are the dualities of familiarity and otherworldliness, interior and exterior, domesticity and freedom, sky and earth, real and imagined.