Several years ago during a period when time slowed down and life became very still, I decided to use my sketchbook to archive and collect moments and observations during several challenging caregiving years. I experienced time as stillness and its slowness transformed my artwork. It transformed the scale of the images and they became more intimate and thoughtful. It also transformed the subject matter and content from compositions that documented space and how we engage the landscape and the city, to actively transcribing moments of intimacy that anchor our relationships with others. This contemplative image-making exclusively focused on the figure and the images were no longer about our environment. Throughout western art, working with the figure is a traditional path and yet the figure became for me a new territory that offered an endless exploration of a mystery that is contained and revealed within another.
"Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it."
From "Sometimes" by Mary Oliver