About
Statement | Poem | Biography
Statement
Images that recur in my work symbolize for me the inner as well as the outer journey that we take over the course of our lives. On the surface things might appear sharply defined, while beneath the surface, lines are softened, edges blurred, colors muted. We think we are standing on solid ground but things are shifting all the time.
As I look down a road or path I am compelled forward, but I have come lately to realize that it’s not what I will find around the bend that I am drawn to, but the moment itself—seeing the extraordinary beauty in the most ordinary of things. I can drive down the same road a hundred times and be suddenly struck by the way light is highlighting a curve or a tree I had not noticed before.
It is this fleeting glimpse that I am trying to convey in my paintings: the rush of an approaching curve, the poignant light at the end of the day, the bright hope of the morning sun streaming in to the kitchen. My paintings for me are reminders that we can only ever be in the present moment, and that if we really pay attention, we can experience its infinite richness.
"Sky" - A poem by Bruce Bond
She paints the sky first. Invisible
the wind that sweeps it into view,
the blue vexed in ribs of clouds, a blush
of empty space. Here and there
a pale bruise, as if to see this close
deepened the ache, however brief,
her brush parting the nameless air.
First the gaze of the untouched
canvas. The air. And out of the air
the long stem of an old palm aimed
at solid ground. The weighting of a world,
an eye; a coming into focus: a crush
of sage, the buckle of an oak, the childhood
lookout that shoulders the road, there
where the oleander raises its poison
underbrush to blind us. Just out of reach
the rough patch where nothing grows,
only one day’s stretch of tire tracks,
each over the other, refiguring the arc
of what it blurs: a child, a view. First
the sky, as if the planet were a sun
pulling all living things to its fire.
Imagine the white bricks of ash
pulled down this way, out of the bluster
of final years into some buried light.
The glassy arrows of our gravity—
there is a color for that as well,
the color that is all the colors. Tell me.
Is it sky that mirrors earth, or earth sky.
The great canes of palms sink down.
Something from a tablet: this buried light.
The great chisel smacks its dash between
birth and death. Birth minus death.
We can only hope, aging as we kneel
to read the page beneath the page
of our shadow. It’s how I make my visit
to that place in the painting the painting
hides, to the long white chain of dashes
in the road, even as it bends—I love
that bend, the way I love the curves
of clouds becoming bodies, bodies clouds.
I love that road, the way it leads, always
away from the viewer, over and over
like an uphill river, standing still.
Biography
BFA, University of California, Irvine
Trinity College of Music, London
Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA
Selected Exhibitions
2007
"Roads: High, Low, Fast and Slow", Terminal 1, LAX, Los Angeles CA
"Roads: High, Low, Fast and Slow", Bridge Gallery, Los Angeles CA
PSA 82nd Annual Exhibiton, Viva Gallery, Encino, CA
"Small is Beautiful", Whites Gallery, Montrose, CA, Award
"Route 66", Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, CA "Impressions of Sierra Madre," Creative Arts, Sierra Madre, CA, Award
2006
"New Members", Mary Oliver, Curator, DCA Slide Registry, Barnsdall Park, Los Angeles, CA
"Road Trip", Fine Artists Factory, Pasadena, CA
"Small Wonders", Pharmaka Art, Los Angeles, CA
"PSA 81st Annual Exhibition", Viva Gallery, Encino, CA, Award "Pasadena Society of Artists", Whites Gallery, Montrose, CA Award
"Altadena Artists " : Altadena Main Library, Altadena, CA
2005
“Landscape/Still Life”; Potted, Los Angeles CA,
“Landscape, Still Life, and Life”: Gale’s, Pasadena CA
“Pasadena Society of Artists”, Whites Gallery, Montrose, CA
“Small Works”, Segil Fine Art, Monrovia, CA
Education
Trinity College of Music, London A.Mus
University of California, Irvine. BFA Studio Art
Award: Deans list
Further Education at Otis Parsons
Collections
GTE Long Beach, Thousand Oaks and Goleta, CA
Samarkand, Santa Barbara, CA
Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena, CA
Getty House, Los Angeles
Zimmer Children’s Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Bibliography
“Home As Art”, Pasadena Star News, Nov. 28, 1997
“Second Nature”, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Aug. 17, 1997
“Looks Can Be Deceiving”. Pasadena Star News, Aug. 17,1990
Related Work Experience
Lecture, Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (February 2005)
Armory Center for the Arts: Get a Life in the Arts Series, (May 2004)
Pasadena Heritage Studio Tour (October 2004 and 2003)
Teaching: Sierra Madre Creative Arts Group 2004, 1995
Painting workshops for Bradford University, York University, Pasadena Art Alliance
Instructor for Decorative Arts Program, University of California, Santa Barbara