I am drawn to what is dark, tangled, and messy. To life that is drying out and rigidly collapsing in on itself. To the uncomfortable places people must go but try to avoid.

Death and the end of things in general have come to be important subject matter for me in recent years. Maybe it’s the closing of one phase and impending birth of a new. Or maybe seeking out seemingly lifeless stuff will become a lifelong endeavor.

I look for beauty in dying matter, in things that are in their balsamic or end phase. In gardening I plant mammoth sunflowers in my backyard so I can watch them dry out into standing hollow forms. In walking I notice what is left or overlooked as useless. In working I sit with those who are close to their own passing or those faced with AIDS. I recognize a tremendous strength in what appears to be vulnerability and brittleness – in people and plants. This strength I believe comes in the experience of having lived.

I focus on what is generally considered not beautiful, that which is past its flowering stage, that which is now retiring or returning to the earth, because I am troubled in part by our culture’s immature idea of beauty and that it rarely exists beyond youth.

In painting my process begins with the act of scratching at emotional sensations. I allow in what is uncomfortable or painful to feel. At times what emerges is an atmosphere of endings and loss, of rejection and grief. To come to face these feelings and not shy away from them seems to me very important.

Sitting in this dark place – maybe it is the dark night of the soul – I find the potential for regeneration appears and remember that death is an end that is really just before the beginning.