If you ask a young child what a bird does, they will reply “fly”. If you contain a bird, by wrapping or covering or caging it, that bird cannot do what comes most naturally to birds.

Many of my sculptures and encaustic/mixed media pieces explore the notion of containment in some way. Something might be contained because it is fragile and precious, or because it is fearsome and dangerous. Containing something may provide focus, calmness and clarity, or it may obscure the true meaning of a thing.

While exploring the notion of containment, I enjoy narrative but only to the extent that it is implied, creating work that is evocative and suggestive but not fully explained or clarified. It is left to the viewer to create meaning from these pieces.

Using encaustic, oil, rawhide, metal and mixed media, I find that material processes are instrumental in defining and directing my work. I am seduced by surface, line and color, while at the same time I concern myself with what lies beneath the surface. In working with the materials, I look for a balance between something that is finished and polished and something that is still in a raw state, perhaps awkward or on the verge of disintegrating, fragmenting, or sliding off the support.

Binding, circumscribing and enveloping the subject matter allows me to calm things down, creating some order out of the surrounding chaos. It is an attempt to make things cohesive and to contain the randomness of life.