Music in My Mind

When I listen to music I see colors.

The sounds are frequencies that activate certain colors. I don't listen to anything when I am painting unless I want to make something to that sound. This is a painting with collage.

Collage Challenge

Formula One 8x8

I love combining collage in my paintings. I have used pieces of an old collagraph, painted book pages from a used math text and painted papers to develop my theme and composition.

When I get toward the end of a painting or collage session, I give myself a challenge to create a piece using only what is left on the table. This a fun and innovative way to see new color combinations and composition possibilities.

Hot Days of Summer

Gondwana 12x42

I've been thinking about my friends in Australia. It's winter there and cold. I get the weather reports from Braidwood, NSW where my show was, and it is chilly. Thinking about this helps me stay cool in the dry heat of August. We haven't had our usual afternoon rains to cool us off.

Inspiration even comes from the weather. When it is hot outside, I paint in cool colors, and when it is snowing and freezing I paint in hot tropical shades. I'm influenced by everything around me: weather, sounds, events and seasons. The painting above was inspired by the tide pools at Depot Beach in Australia. We also went to another very special grove of Tree Ferns where I learned about the rivers that ran through Australia before the land mass known as Gondwana split apart to become other continents like Africa, India and South America. The land that remained as Australia had rivers running not to the sea and ancient fossils on the land.

Gondwana represents the land masses splitting apart and it incorporates transfer images taken from photos of the tide pools. The way the orbs look, they could be planets. I like to play with the micro and the macro interchanging positions.

What inspires you?