Artist’s Statement: Fluidity (from the 2008 Water Series)

Encaustic, oil & mixed media on wood panel

Music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music.

T.S. ELIOT

This series is about the fluidity of the mind. The unmooring of conscious thought as we drift toward sleep or lose ourselves in concentration and the ebb and flow of the ocean’s surface and depths: these things are related I am sure. Infinite permutations on the surface mirror the sky as well as the depths.

The creation of this work is meditative, quiet. Like the waves themselves, pattern upon pattern unfolds. I forget myself in the process of repetition, working with countless moments caught mechanically with my camera. I then add layers of encaustic; heat, wax and recurring strokes of my hand work together to create a fluid surface that hardens, submerging the photograph beneath its depths. Physically, rhythmically marking time.

Layer upon layer accumulates, and the photograph may stay true to itself or become something else entirely. The action–the repetitive processes of mark-making–always in the moment. Endlessly making the image new again.