Statement

Ten Thousand Flowers

This series of drawings began with the Gone to Feed the Roses portfolio, in which I worked directly from arrangements of my mother's funeral flowers, each drawing an invented, composite image of different bouquets as in Dutch flower paintings. (The title is based on Edna St. Vincent Millay's Dirge Without Music.)

Since that time, I have continued drawing flowers periodically with the larger series titled Ten Thousand Flowers (see poem by Zen Buddhist monk Wu Men). The works map a range of formal possibilities and expressive states through a varied orchestration of core drawing elements - line, value, space and mark-making - in a search for the precarious balance between absence and presence. Dislocations and instablity are part of the drawing process, which includes blind contour.

Gone to Feed the Roses (#1), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#2), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#3), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#4), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#5), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#6), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#7), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#8), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses, Studio shot with Beau, 2012
Gone to Feed the Roses (#9), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#10), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#11), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#12), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#13), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#14), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#15), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#17), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#18), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#19), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Gone to Feed the Roses (#20), 2012
Archival marker, graphite & gesso on museum board
32" x 40"
Ten Thousand Flowers (#1), 2013
Archival marker & graphite on museum board
16" x 20"
Ten Thousand Flowers (#2), 2014
Archival marker & graphite on museum board
16" x 20"