In my work as a psychotherapist and as an artist, I frequently find myself exploring the beauty that we can find in the fragments and broken pieces that are a part of us all, as well as those fragments and broken things that we find along our way. I challenge myself: not to waste the smallest thing of beauty, to find a way to make it a part of myself or of my work.
When I worked in clay, I found myself pushing it to its thinnest and most fragile edge, its most delicate and precarious construction, without even willing it. And then, repairing the inevitable breaks with the broken pieces and fragments that I had at hand. Working now in mixed media painting and printmaking, I start by putting down color, creating texture, and then layering on lines, more color, more texture, more lines and forms, using all of the scraps and broken things, to discover what emerges.
How are we to put together all of the parts of ourselves – some of them torn and broken? Can we have the courage to know all of what we are made of, and how we are put together, and let others then see us? Can we push ourselves to the edge to see what is possible, letting go of our fears of imperfection and even failure as we stretch ourselves to discover what we can be?
About art itself: I love its infinite possibilities for expression, and to see what different people do with the same material, each of us finding our inspiration in the same world where we live together.