Continuations
“The daily layering of one moment over the next reminds me of my limits, and of the deeper hopes for my children and for our world. What alters and what remains along the way take shape unhurriedly, in the cadence of each ordinary though transcendent moment after another.”
Read Full Artist Statement Below
Once I watched the sunrise from the summit of Mount Sinai. Long before dawn, I started climbing. My route began at St. Catherine’s Monastery where I was staying, and from there the trail steadily and steeply ascended through stony ravines and over steps carved centuries ago by pilgrims. By the time I reached the final incline to the peak, the sky had changed from black to silver and then to warm green along the horizon below. I scaled the last bit of trail with plenty of time to spare, so I sat on the cold rocks and waited. Other pilgrims steadily filled the spaces around me, packing more and more tightly onto the small summit. I was grateful for the warmth of other onlookers as we sat quietly in the cold, together watching the ever changing colors of the sky. When the sun rose at last, it came with a wave of warmth and a surge of orange light.
That morning on Mount Sinai was years ago during a time of life when I was waiting, needing to choose a path, hoping for guidance. And looking back now I can see that guidance came, though in less dramatic and more unexpected ways than the immediacy of that sunrise. Much of my life looks different now, but at heart I am still mostly that same person waiting, expectant, feeling a little lost and looking for transcendence.
When I am making my paintings, many of them go through so many alterations that the surface of the finished piece is unrecognizable from where it began. Each painting takes on its own voice, and the process of letting that voice flourish, however different from my initial vision, can be difficult. It involves more waiting than I would like. Usually I have to set my pieces aside for a few weeks or a few months to let my ideas adjust. Then, when the painting and I seem ready to keep going, I take it back out and start scraping off, painting over, sanding, re-shaping, often with frustration, sometimes with joy at the unexpected, always trying to accept the altered textures that follow. And if you look closely at the surface of my work you can see these rambling textures, the shaping and alterations that took place along the way toward completion. Gradually I am allowing myself to embrace this process of waiting and responding to it with something less like despair and more like hope.
My deepest hopes are ones that involve a lot of waiting. They come at the unglamorous pace of washing another load of diapers, of crawling on the ground with my daughter, of watching ripples on the lake with my son, of stepping back into my studio on days when that step feels challenging, facing that next layer of paint without really knowing where it will lead. The daily layering of one moment over the next reminds me of my limits, and of the deeper hopes for my children and for our world. What alters and what remains along the way take shape unhurriedly, in the cadence of each ordinary though transcendent moment after another.
(These paintings will be displayed in Jackson, Wyoming with Altamira Fine Art in conjunction with the Jackson Hole Arts Festival, September, 2025)
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