I paint with acrylic, sometimes mixing in fabric, wood, and other materials.  I often start by drawing underlying structures to begin a dance of pushing the paint around, or I cut up and re-piece my paintings, until the parts fit together, like completed puzzles of color, pattern, repetition, rhythm, scale, and materials.  Sometimes working on the floor, I crawl on top of canvas or panel, pressing fabric into puddles of paint, or sanding down areas to reveal earlier layers, melding immediate marks with patina from the past.  My paintings are informed by worn walls, rickety fences, and well-loved quilts.

My work is a hybrid of delicate handiwork and tough construction.  I love to build or take objects apart and put them back together in new ways.  I wonder why I feel the need to make my work wonky when it could be easier to just make something beautiful.  But mine is a search for mending relationships, building bridges, finding the best in every situation, and magnifying and honoring all the little flaws and foibles that make something better than perfect.

I am a maker who comes from a long line of makers.  My great-grandmother taught me to crochet, always reminding me in her thick Italian accent, “If you don’t like it, just ripple it out and start again.”  My mother and grandmother reworked clothes from thrift stores into “new” clothes for our family.  My grandfather, a plumber, rebuilt the house he’d built for my mom’s family after it burned down in a fire.  And as a little girl I watched my father, who was also a plumber, tie flies, draw blueprints and plans, and take apart and put back together whatever he wanted.  Once we were stranded on the side of the road in the desert and he used a pair of my mom’s pantyhose to make a fan belt to get us to the next town.  So in the spirit of making what I need with what I have, I construct a painting with strips of torn fabric and layers of paint, weave a veil with pen and paper, or build a wall with window screen and thread.