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Each day brings the same urgent creative challenge: I anticipate that my actions will be blocked, interrupted, doubted, or ignored. Why? Because for much of my life they have been, sometimes by those close to me and more often by our patriarchal society's unrelenting devaluation of women's voices. One tactic I use to overcome my apprehension is to connect directly with my materials. Engaging in playful, audacious trial and error, I compose using water-based paints, canvas, paper, drawing tools, scissors and my sewing machine. Not surprisingly, my studio explorations are materially regressive. I do then see rather than see then do. My process is private. It is a full body undertaking and I am keenly aware of the cathartic and contemplative moments that happen as I interact with color, form, and texture. Through my open, abstract compositions and the work's immersive scale, the space in my paintings invites my audience to create their own experiential realities as opposed to adhering to the specifics of mine.
In performance art where agency is enacted the necessity of the object is eliminated, but with my painting, I want an exacting, durable record of my story alongside its history of being veiled, obscured, or erased. Let me explicate my premise of “theatre of agency” from different points of entry: my experience of agency, my audience's experience of my work, relevant art critical precedents, and finally my painting process itself.
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