1- In your paintings there are many symbols from different civilizations
(african, Indian etc...) Which values do you share with those cultures?
In a certain aspect I feel far away from the values rooted in ancient
cultures in my external life as I'm running around playing the roles of
mother, graphic designer, painter in contemporary society and in a modern
city (San Francisco), but I've found that listening to music from India,
Afria, Tibet, the Balkhans, etc. while making art resonates something in
me that is very tied to the earth...it is about the death/life cycle. The
music reminds me of the mystery and timelessness of our spirit
existence, so perhaps this is a value I share...a sense that there is a
spirit world and metaphysical world unseen that is powerful. In the
creative process I believe we tap into it, just as I believe in our dream
life we tap into it whether we want to or not. I have had symbols from
dreams become fuel for art, which I feel is the collective unconscious, or
unseen world, making itself known.
2- Is the music a recurring theme of inspiration in your work? Which are
the rhythms and sounds present in Your artworks?
Music has been inspirational in my design work and in the paintings. In
designing CD packaging I was fortunate to have a fantastic client, Lee
Townsend, a producer in Berkeley, who exposed me to some really special
jazz and world music artists, some of whom embody a distinctive fusion of
styles, mixing very old forms with very new jazz in masterful
compositions/improvisations. One artist that influenced my use of these
symbols in the package design, and who's music was inspirational was
Shweta Jhaveri, who sings north Indian classical vocal music in the form
"khayal." Her lyrics and form is hindi sung in ragas (melodic structures
of a specific form...slow improvised notes woven with fast intricate vocal
patterns) and this "ancient" form is fused with new jazz sounds from
master artists like Will Bernard, Jenny Scheinman, Bill Douglas and Jim
Kassis improvising behind her. In the package I used some very old symbols
within a modern design. I was inspired and then began painting fragments
of these symbols in large square paintings and expanses of color and
texture.
3- Which " mark" would you use to describe Your contemporary time?
A while back, I found a certain symbol that was an Indian wood block
design carving used for fabric printing and I believe it is probably 50 +
years old, since they are discarded after that time period, and I used it
in Shweta Jhaveri's package. Soon after, I started using a portion of the
stamp with some alteration as a sort of iconic mark. The reason this is
descriptive of my contemporary time is that it seems to show some fusion
of an image that looks a bit like an african symbol, or Indian symbol or
music notation mixed with a design that looks like a circuit board detail.
It looks as if it holds some mysterious truth about these worlds coming
together. That being said, what I like about using marks or fragments of
them (or marks or shapes I make up) is that they are enigmatic. They seem
to hold some meaning though they really don't have meaning. It makes you
think and engages you. I am intrigued with the many conflicts in our world
where technology and modern civilization have complete clashes with really
ancient thinking. In some cases the ancient thinking is what is sublime
and to be protected and modern advancement is getting us in trouble and is
ignorant. In other scenarios the ancient based ideas seem ignorant and
the modern thinking is relevant. We are left perplexed and full of
questions.
4- Art means research, it's an empirical travel looking for what is known
and unknown, what is real and illusory, what is perfect and faulty, the
nuance and particular. What does it leave... this travel in your chest,
inside you?
The journey the creative process leaves with me is that the process is
what is important. It is about surrender and in some ways like being a
midwife who guides a baby out, or like being the mother who is allowing the
baby to come out...or it also could be compared to surrendering to a
relationship that has its ups and downs. For a midwife and mother, the
baby will come out no matter what you do, so surrendering to the process
is the important part. In a relationship there is always both ecstatic
joy and then sometimes horrible disappointment but you keep going,
surrendering, if you want to see the relationship live. For me making art
is both terrifying and exhilarating as the process is full of both
struggle and joy.
5- Who is the painter that influenced most Your artistic development?
There are many painters who I'm inspired by and maybe influenced by but I
would mention two. The famous Catalan painter Antoni Tapies, who was
prominent in the 50's, whose large earthy, quiet but dramatic paintings
really made an impact on me when I saw his work in La Fundacion Antoni Tapies in
Barcelona. He paints in what was called "matter painting" with heavily
built up surfaces and he created ambiguous paintings suggesting spiritual
content. He included graphic elements or signs in his paintings and his
emphasis was on the surface and experimentation with materials. I was
really taken with the paintings when I saw them in real life as I had
loved the photos I had seen for years in art books.
Also, I love the paintings of Caio Fonseca. He paints listening to
classical music, and I'm inspired by his minimal and pleasing colors and
the way he breaks up the space with whimsical shapes and lines and
curves...always with a hint of a grid behind for structure. I licensed one
of his paintings for a cd cover for the group "Oregon" playing with the
Moscow Symphony orchestra...a blend of classical and jazz. Looking at his
catalogues of paintings at that time was one of the reasons I decided to
start painting.