When observing the world I imagine it as an abstract. When I create art, visual parallels of my experience occur in my work.
My work is abstract with subtle imagery of the environment, nature vs. the manmade.
I work in painting and hybrid traditional/digital prints. I create paintings in traditional media. I appreciate them as they are, then transform some paintings, parts of paintings, remnants, and residue with digital media. It is an ongoing conversation between my art in different media.
The structures of my more recent paintings are reminiscent of analytic cubism, however I don’t start with an object to depict and then look at it from different angles. I begin by drawing an abstract structure. Currently my lines are mostly organic and only sometimes straight or angular. I try to stay within the boundaries of the picture plane only sometimes allowing the lines to leave the edge. When I paint I slowly pull out various shapes in the drawings, sometimes combining two or more to form a new shape. When I paint I’m also trying to create different textures for each shape or area with brushstrokes and abstract textures formed by dripping paint and blotting it. (In my hybrid traditional/digital prints these textures reappear). I end the painting when it feels right. I generally recognize something, an animal, object, or situation.


My titles have transformed through time. They did come from digital file names when I photographed my work. I liked the way these file names conceptually related to vision and were also abstract. Recently I have found the need to give them more specific titles in addition to give a further entrance into my work. I have also used a few tiltles translated into Hawaiian.

I have also been inspired by the recent exhibition Animals in Japanese Art at the Honolulu Museum. I like the way animals are depicted as metaphors for human behavior and relationships with the environment.

I’ve enjoyed all the lectures and events (Ku I Ka Mana Series) this past year at the Honolulu Museum related to Kapiolani Langraf’s `Au`a.

I particularly like the Satoru Abe paintings from the 1960’s which are abstractions connected to nature in the exhibition Satoru Abe: Reaching for the Sun at the Honolulu Museum. I also am drawn to the colors he used in his paintings.