This body of work has been brewing in my bones for quite some time. It is heavily inspired by block printing and working with my children in the studio the last few years... the culmination of learning to let go, watching them work, and the place of freedom they would work from. To put it plainly, it fascinated me. Through hundreds of hours of observation, I found that my children do not draw actual appearances or "likeness" to whatever person or scene they are creating.
They reproduce a mental image.
For example, a typical child's drawing of a human being is a large head with large eyes, with the body frequently omitted and the limbs attached to the head. Children select what seem to them the significant parts of the thing to be represented. With no concern for realistic appearance, they express their symbolized concept.
As I began to paint this collection, I knew I wanted to express water-scapes from this same uninhibited approach I watched my children take. I began with an idea, a photo, a memory and then allowed that to develop into a composite concept of feeling and a mental image. From where this came from exactly I cannot say, but when I made the space for this to occur it came rushing in like a freight train. This conceptual image became reality and disregarded visual sensations or realistic proportions: ie. the exaggerated shapes in the waves, how the waves seemed to overlap and tangle together like quilts on a bed.
These exaggerations awakened in me a deep sense of freedom and revealed a sort of instinctual thought pattern. I feel these paintings have been stored deep inside of me along with my childhood. This collection of Blue Beaches awakens early habits and sensations, and has plunged me deep into that miraculous world of imagination.