I am fond of Edmund Carpenter’s description of an Inuit figure carver from the 1973
book “Eskimo Realities.” The carver, Carpenter says, rarely sets out to make an
image of any specific animal, for instance, a seal, but instead picks up the ivory and
examines it “to find its hidden form.” If no image is readily apparent to the carver,
he works “aimlessly,” “humming or chanting” as he does, until the animal hidden
within the ivory, a seal--at last ”emerges.”
From a similar giving and yielding process of discovery, largely improvisational, the
imagery in my art emerges, seemingly instinctual and chaotic but ultimately
achieving a formal order. When employing this process in my current mixed media
works I use Liquitex acrylics, computer print out, Rembrandt pastels and Castelli
colored pencils on Arches watercolor paper.