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tide pools

These paintings began with a curiosity for kelp, watery residue left by tides.
The water movement creates tangles. In the paintings, the tangles become the movement.

The graphic brush strokes are rhythmic and integral to the process recalling the constancy of ocean movement. The painting process is slow, mirroring the careful looking required by tide pool. The paint is layered sometimes concealing background forms and colors, sometimes merging. Tide pools are about seeing through surface turbulence to wonders beneath.

The idea for this series developed on visits to San Francisco Bay Area beaches and marine preserves. I collected specimens and sketched found objects and tangles of flotsam. In the studio, these studies crossed with an ongoing search for a language of abstract forms and ideas about natural history.

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