About Me
​
I live and work in Portland, Maine as a special education teacher. Art is a side passion that has stuck for about 14 years now
I have broken more paintings than I can count. Glass is fragile. It breaks when it is stressed; sometimes it breaks for no reason at all. It can be gutting--the immediacy of that loss. I try to see it as an exercise in non-attachment.
Glass is also durable. It’s hard and impermeable. I can leave it outside in the rain and snow. I can make a mess on it with paint, solvents, flour and sand, and then I can clean it up. I’ve gone through countless razor blades, steel wool, bristle brushes, solvents, vinegar and soap. It’s sometimes as much work to clean the glass as it is to apply color. If I don’t like a painting I can scrape it off and start anew, but most of the time I leave the mess as I made it. Free windows are plentiful.
Spraypaint is cheap and fast. I am beholden to the colors of the season, but they can be blended on the glass itself. Water facilitates color-mixing with satisfying unpredictability. Flour can be sifted on, sprayed over, then blown off. I play with movement and melding, with application and removal. I explore the tension between what can be manipulated and what is pure chance. Color mesmerizes with its myriad mutations. Chaos imprisoned behind the hard flatness of glass.