About

Warm Breezes

Warm Breezes is a series of collage paintings in which bird and flower images from napkins and tissue paper transform into beautiful scenarios of abstract nature. Fragments of sheet music, clothing patterns, cigar rings and handmade papers mix with loose abstract marks in crayon, pencil and paint. Birds, seemingly so fragile, are true survivors. Can nature remain intact through the turbulence of climate change?

Collage Painting

I refer to my work as collage painting because it is the interaction of the two that interests me. Collage elements are by nature reflections of the past. Often applied as geometric shapes, they add structure to the composition. Their faded colors evoke age. In contrast, the paint is bright, applied as loose abstract marks. It has spontaneity. A dialogue begins between old and new, movement and stasis. The work creates a moment when past and present converge. This interaction of time and texture creates a story neither could tell on its own.

Triptychs & Diptychs

My first triptych grew out of necessity because the largest canvas to fit in the backseat of my car was 36x40”. I painted a seascape that I wanted to continue, so I added another canvas, and another. Over the years it has become a favorite format. Why not paint one long canvas? I like the way the canvases read like pages in a book. Each canvas of a multicanvas painting can stand alone, yet when hung together, speak to each other through their similarities and differences.

Climate Change

Hurricane Sandy caused flooding in my neighborhood when it hit the New Jersey coast in 2012. For my series, Sandy, I use painted mulberry paper and newspaper images to merge two realities - the devastation of the actual event told through the newspaper images and my reaction to it, told through the muddied colors and chaotic brush stokes.

Rising is a series of seascapes merged with images. Its elongated proportion has the calm of an oriental screen but the images in the water turn the calm menacing. The sea charts are metaphors of our lost sense of direction as well as our shifting shores. The paintings reflect an uncertain future and challenge our responsibility as guardians of the planet.

Fabric

Seaing uses fabric to express sea and sky. The subject of clouds, wind and tides present endless possibilities because they are in constant motion. I chose because the material can be cut so the edges fray. These threads become expressive lines that give the work movement and spontaneity. The transparency of the fabric creates new colors as it overlaps.  The white background suggests clouds and reflections of light. 

The largest work, Dancing In The Light, is 6 ½ x 12 ½ feet long.  Its size embraces the viewer with color. Interfacing, a fibrous layer of wax that melts under the heat of an iron, is used to adhere the shapes to the background.

Photography

Photography is another vehicle to find the abstract in nature. A Walk Home is a series of sidewalk photos. The elements of design are somewhat whimsical—marks spray-painted on a curb, a splash of tar, a utility pole. The translucent shapes are shadows—some soft and organic, others bold and graphic. Around The Block demonstrates the graphic nature of the Bismarck Palm. Pigadi is an olive tree in Greece photographed in May when certain wild grasses blanket their feet.