HANGING AT THE MOUNTAIN COW CAFE

With Peter Cascone and Michael Gellatly, our works will be up through the month. I've got 7 anxious chicken paintings from the years 2007-2009 on the walls. Here is a copy of my artist statement:

Ever since my marriage started failing and good friends started dying I have made a commitment to do things differently. I paint every single day. I love my chickens. Through these two realms I have found a voice for my sadness, my courage, and my faith. Within my daily practice I recall memories and visualize evocative tones that distill symbols into paintable vignettes. My work blends text and image in humorous, dissonant, and melding ways to explore security, panic, and the mortal experience. Because I feel transient as a species, the perpetual conflict between leaving and being is evident everywhere in my work. This duplicity is also captured in the whimsical palette, the playful brushwork and lightness of imagery that lay bare the anxieties of our time. Brushstrokes, text, and nature are strategies I explore in transforming the material to be spiritual and harvesting the spiritual to material.

I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college with a BFA and a BA in painting, printmaking and art history from Colorado University in 1984. Born into a family of artists, curators, and spiritualists, I spent the first 20 years as a world traveler. I am the mother of two sons. The last two decades of my life I have lived in rural Dutchess county and been blessed with a network of artists that inspire my great love for roots with wings.