Over the past two years my painting has taken a twist and turn, evolved into a new, organic structure. A dialogue between Plasticity (2003) and Plane Painting (2005) has developed to create Relief(2007). A need for a more intimate and kinesthetic process emerged in the summer of 2005. I needed to actually feel the canvas and shape it rather than use it as just a surface for a painted illusion. I was interested in questioning what makes a painting and at what point a painting, in being released from its supports, becomes sculptural.

I have long been fascinated by the rendering of drapery: drawn, painted, sculpted, photographed. Most recently, it is the drapery in Greek and Roman statues and the folds in Renaissance paintings that have captured my focus.
What does drapery conceal?
What do the folds reveal?

I am especially interested in engaging the viewer's attention with these reliefs. The reliefs emerge from the wall and contradict the flatness against which they rest. The colors interact with each other in relief then the relief reacts to the space around it.
How is the viewer drawn into the visual topography of the relief?
Is it the color or interaction of the colors that attracts?
Is it the positive and negative shifts and movements of the canvas that draw the attention?

Just as I have become closely involved in shaping the canvas and breathing color onto the interacting forms, so too the viewer can become engaged in the conversation and movement of the forms. Light and shadow introduce subtle changes and allow for different visual experiences. In repositioning the body, the viewer perceives new relationships and interactions. What seemed flat, now takes on physical dimension. What appeared to have height from one vantage point now becomes more 2-dimensional.

This work invites the viewer to become a part of a landscape in which the canvas has been liberated from traditional supports in order to explore new visual territory.
What a relief!