Artist Statement

“Morisot and Klimt ”

I recently took a trip to Washington DC where I discovered the National Gallery has 1000's of Berthe Morisots, or so it seemed. Difficult to believe a woman who hid her work from her husband's (Manet) friends could produce so much work.

I am inspired by Morisot's scrunching of the figures into the picture frame, as if they would not fit at all unless scrunched. Many of Morisot's pieces in DC take on a horizontal format. The logical expression afterwards was to try to do the same in a vertical format. Immediately I thought of Klimt. It is rather like that Northern European feeling, the fear of empty space. But instead of filling the space with lots of various elements, these artists use typically one figure and crowd it in in the most interesting manner. It almost apppears to be the same impulse the Gothic Cathedral sculptors would use when creating sculptures for their door jambs. If the figure was not long enough to fit, they would stretch the form. The opposite here is happening. The figures are folded to fit the picture frame.

They are created using digital media. First a digital camera is used. Then I create variations on the effect in Photoshop using color modes and filters and layer effects and more.

I form a relationship between the process of digital media and the final suite of pieces. Both translate the world. Both feel as if they encapsulate the world.