‘Almost Home’ is a reflection of work created in a time of profound change, one of longing and loss, yet imprinted with an enduring spirit of optimism and hope.
When puzzling through a problem, what do we do but take it apart and analyze the pieces. We simplify and reduce everything to their elements in order to build back a new order, to see the world from a new perspective.
Confined to a small workspace during the pandemic, I began the abstraction series as a kind of mental yoga. The works had a limited size, scale, and with an economy of gesture. I was mobile, working in remote places far from home. Stacks of ink-washed squares became a packable color library and visual laboratory. Blocks of color were arranged on the wall as palette studies for subsequent paintings. A new method of developing my work began to set in.
Color is crucial to my endeavor. Life and art make us different people. I may start a journey in the landscape, but I deconstruct it and reformulate it only to return to the beginning landscape.
The painting may have changed, but so have I.