artist statement

‘Les Grandes Dames’ is an assemblage of figures depicting women as distinct entities.  My objective has been to add my visual voice to those who have been and are involved in repositioning the rights and personhood of women.  This is  also a cautionary tale.  Women’s rights have existed only within narrow bands of history and usually involving only a portion of the world’s women, which, during this last century, some have been experiencing  – but storm clouds loom.

One of my figurative sources has been the virtuosic and singular portrayals found in the terracotta ‘Court Lady’ tomb figures of the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD).  It has been posited that these figures, depicted with great charm and verve, are actual portraits of specific court ladies, along with their competing hairstyles.

My yearning has been to say so much and with such economy, as did the great Tang artists.    But rarely for me.  Instead, it is a skirmish back and forth with compositional, technical, or conceptual revisions.   I do take some comfort in the thought that it may be through the misstep, the flaw, or the cracked note where observer/artist connections are bridged.