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Artist's Statement:
Stories link us together, across our cultures, our pasts, our futures. They are the way I understand the world and how I fit into it. They allow me to tell you part of who I am and yet they allow me to remain partially hidden in the costumes and affect my roles require. Somehow, I always seem to manage to climb onto the set and into the painting, sometimes as a bit player sometimes as the leading actor.

My paintings narrate not only events in which human and animal actors play, but they also narrate the set on which the stories take place. To me, narration explains how we all fit together with each other and with each component of our environment. It describes the relationships and patterns, the crisscrossings, of our emotions, of our bodies, of rocks exposed in a cliff, of tree branches reaching to the sun, of the way a knight’s suit of armor fits together--ring of mail to ring of mail.

And, it is patterns and connections that medieval painters tell me about in their tempera-coated, wooden panels. They dazzle me with their colors and beckon me to come among them--to follow the path to the harbor, to climb the cliffs in the background, to wonder at the leaves linked by fragile stems. These paintings come through seven centuries to tell me stories that connect me to their lives and to their streets and forests.

And, since they have invited me to come to them, the stories in this series of paintings start with them.