I have always worked in series—streams of thoughts and desires common to us all, represented by images. I see the images as indicators of the material world.
At first my series were narrative, encompassing quotidian aspects such as romantic love and building construction. And I considered ideas—enlightenment, biology, memory. Now I am thinking about nature and our planet.
The Nature series is meant to be very general—with all tree objects in mind, and not just the tree on which a painting is based. The Nature series is meant to be about all nature objects, really: sky, dirt, minerals, water. For all my series, I think about what I want to talk about, then I photograph that idea and use those photographs as the basis for a number of paintings, in this case thirty-three paintings.
The Fibonacci series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 provides the format for the Nature series. The paintings are meant to rise vertically in horizontal rows in numbers of paintings, covering a wall 279 inches long and about 160 inches high. The bottom, or first, row comprises one painting. The second row comprises one painting. The third row comprises two paintings. The fourth row comprises three paintings. And so on to the top and final row of thirteen twenty-one-inch square paintings. In this way, the format is in the silhouette of a tree.
The Nature series is meant to reflect what a Fibonacci series represents—a certain size ratio found in nature, as in a spiral, and in aspects of Arte Povera. Math together with nature. Human plus universe.
These paintings can function as a sign of nature, and one painting can signify the entire series. They can be shown by being scanned and enlarged, as a public presentation, or made smaller for private use, as a kind of personal icon. I consider this as I paint.
The context for my work would be that of environmental awareness and love. In the words of Agnes Martin: “I believe in living above the line. Above the line is happiness and love.…Below the line is all sadness and destruction and unhappiness. And I don’t go down below the line for anything.”