My paintings begin with modeling paste manipulated with a palette knife into peaks and valleys which the subsequent mulitiple layers of paint sink into. Images of nature and of the human-made world around me are then superimposed on this abstract textural background. These images are often wildly dissimilar -- a realistic scene, a line drawing, abstract shapes, sewing patterns, numbers and letters, mixing on the heavily layered surface producing a sense of history, veiled meanings, a kind of poetic "dig."
The objects that I use in my assemblages mirror this feeling--the poetic dig now reveals the embedded history of old sheet music, bones and bark and small polished pebbles, milagros from Mexico, bits and pieces of old chandeliers, all transformed into a new object which encompasses the history of its parts and creates a continuing story.