These works have evolved from a series of drawings starting with the scribble drawings in the winter of 2005, through the Lenten drawings, to the Holy Week collages, to the Forest Vessels collages, to Inside the Forest Vessels, and back again to the Lenten drawings. At first I was trying to get to the essence of the stroke on paper ( the "scribble" ), the way my body moves the pencil, the transparency of the paper, (the drawings were done on vellum), what the shapes were / are saying, what needs to be said. It's a very instinctual process of feeling my way through the forest, of trying to find / see the light, of trying to bring forth what I sense is there. Over a period of months as I worked with these "marks" something began to emerge. They began to have the feel of the forest in early morning light. Shapes had acquired a vocabulary; boats, bridges, bodies / vessels, and what came to possess me was the light in the dark and the almost tangible sense of becoming, of emerging, of containment, of beauty within. What I sense is that this is the heart, not only of the forest but also ourselves, our essence. It seems as though the great drama of the forest in all it's moods and colors was able, again, to remind me of our essential nature, that part of us most alive and knowing. That part of ourselves contained yet uncontainable, that part of ourselves connected to the whole.

These works are a combination of the pencil drawings, collage, photos of the drawings, of the woods, bodies, marks, water, ice, snow, mud ect., layered together, regrouped and reformed and enclosed with encaustic which makes them glow; leading me back and forth, and surprising me with what they want to do and say.

2005-06