Artist Statement

In 2005, after my last gallery NAGA show of layered mixed media paintings, I ran away from my art practice for almost 10 years. The longer I stayed away the more averse I became to going to my studio. When I tried, I shot down my ideas before they could take form. By 2015, I gave myself the ultimatum… Either give up my studio or get back to making art.

I began taking print making classes to sidestep my resistance and to reconnect to art making through a new media. My printmaking teacher, Rhoda Rosenberg, asked me “why don’t you buy your own etching press?“ You can do that, I responded. I knew that if I committed to such a major purchase, I would have to use it!

I went into therapy… again. This time to hopefully crack my cement artist block and discover what was paralyzing me. My therapist suggested making work to inform my therapy, with no intention of showing or selling it. The simple prints that followed revealed feelings of vulnerability, desire, and shame. I made print after print combining watercolor, carborundum, and dry point. The recurring image was a young nude ingenue in poses of desire overlain with powerful line drawn hands. Were the hands protecting, hiding, violating, or silencing? These prints were shocking to me and I couldn’t talk about them. What was I afraid of…the fear of revealing something deeply personal, the fear of speaking about it, or the fear of actually knowing it?

Powerfully, through the process of making these prints, I simultaneously uncovered the painful feeling of shame and released myself from it.

This work is about being silenced, but it speaks in full volume.