About my drawing in the MFAC

A new drawing, #16 (Oak Avenue), is in the Michigan Fine Arts Competition, which opened June 22, at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center, Birmingham, MI, and runs through August 23, 2018. The following is from a conversation with the artist.

Why did you make this piece?

I've had an affinity for the qualities of paper and drawing ever since childhood. Through high school and art school, I kept a sketchbook. For some years I've been making drawings, a fitting name for anything made with paper that's just shy of painting. In 2014, I moved my studio back to my childhood home to assist my mother, who'd just turned 90. Bringing with me a bag of old scrapped drawings, I arranged the pieces on the basement floor in an impromptu fashion.

How do you expect the audience to react?

I'd like them to react to the color, its brightness and intensity. But then the different shapes might come next. My involvement with them is no less vital than my involvement with the color. The progression of the series has been in the direction of simplifying the color and reducing, to just a handful, the number of shapes. The meaning of the work comes through the repetition inherent in the process, the same colors and shapes placed in close proximity within a changing composition.

How does your work fit in with current contemporary art? It contains most if not all of my passions: color, hand-drawn forms, repetition, pattern, process oriented art-making, a surface that reveals the process of making the work such as torn edges and staple holes, and shows an involvement with other artists and an ongoing dialogue with myself. While technology such as an iPad, a camera, and a computer are used at different points in the making of my drawings, they are ultimately handmade objects made with paint, charcoal, adhesive, and paper.

#16 (Oak Avenue) Gouache, acrylic, cut and torn pasted paper mounted on paper 23 x 18" 2018