Artist Statement
Eight Years ago I came across a book, American Lace and Lace Makers and my fascination with textiles was ignited.  Next to each plate of lace, the author, Emily Noyes Vanderpool, tried to identify the individual woman who had created each lace object.  Often she failed.  She could identify their homes and the events of their times, but the absence of authorship was a clear statement about the position these textile makers held in society.  The “handiwork” they left behind showed many of these women to be artists in their own right.  I felt an affinity to the combination of delicacy and strength in ornate lace; to the complex, introspective worlds revealed in tapestries.  Many of the remnants that these women left behind speak volumes about the evolution of women in society.

In my early work, I painted lace metaphorically as a self-portrait of my brain.  My early paintings were tight and meticulous.  I painted each brushstroke similar to the way a lace maker might sew each stitch of her garment.  In many renditions, they were replicas of the actual craft.  As I increased my ability to sit, observe minute detail and paint relentlessly, I have begun to develop a greater insight into what thread is capable of communicating.  My paintings are more complex and the textiles represented have evolved to systems, networks and inner worlds.

The solid black background in the original executions represents the absence of the identity of the maker.  It is a presentation of missing information about the artifact.  Recently, I have become more interested in filling these empty spaces with my own presence.  As a result, I began to create site specific work at historical sites, bodies of work that are painterly, but no longer two dimensional.  For example, “The River Dress” created in Abigail Brown’s bedrooms of the John Brown House Museum in Providence, RI, was an interpretation of her experience as a female in the late 18th century.  The dress, constructed from white sheets and antique tablecloths found in my own mother’s house was painted and sewn to drape and spill over the marital bed in the home to which she was bound.  The dress was painted with the same swirling blue pattern that was printed on the coverlet of the bed on which it was placed. However, the pattern on the dress was painted loosely, using staining, in order to break the tight blue print on the coverlet.  By making the dress pattern bleed and overflow, I broke the containment of the space suggesting Abigail’s presence through my own hand.


I see historical sites and artifacts as portals to another era.  They are vessels that evoke introspection and emotion as we come to understand their history.  My desire in my paintings and interventions is to bring humanity into these spaces and fill the absences that hover there with my personal interpretation of the individuals that once inhabited these places and of life as it once was and could be.