I don’t intend for my art to convey a “message”. Rather, my art serves to please my eye and to sooth my soul. Albert Camus’ philosophy towards his art and his work is revealed by his own words: “A man’s work is nothing but a slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened” and “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time”. His philosophy stirs deep emotions within me and directly inspires my work. For me, this emotional inspiration manifests itself in the way I perceive the presence of light and its effects on objects, atmosphere and spirit.

 

As a young child I was mesmerized by the breeze blowing the curtains with the sun coming through. Today it brings to mind the sea breeze flowing through the window in Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Wind from the Sea” or sunlight coming through a window in his painting “Cranberries”. While Wyeth and Jan Vermeer both create sensations of serenity and harmony through their use of light, J. M. W. Turner’s use of light imparts a feeling of mystery and intrigue. Turner does this in his watercolor work by layering and blending, or “bleeding” the colors. My use of this technique with my own choice of color creates an awareness of spiritual depth and a desire to move deeper within my soul to rediscover the pure emotion and unbearable beauty of those childhood moments.

 

With her use of bold color and blending, Georgia O’Keeffe has been a teacher of inner-strength and inner-peace fused as one. Her paintings impart to me a desire for quiet wisdom that I must continue to move towards. And so it is: "In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer”. Albert Camus