35 Claver Place

Blue Spring Tree: Encaustic / collage on wood panel- 40" x 26" 2006

marston-reid.com

Oil on linen, 2005, 52x38 inches

elisabethcondon.com

I paint contemporary landscape as a multi-layered space shaped by consciousness, deja vu, location and cultural influence. Each painting combines illusion, cartoon, text, gesture, pours and "Pat the Bunny"-like textures that contain disparate realities in single works.

I did these little landscapes in the middle of winter, it was cold, I wanted to be somewhere else. I could hang them on the wall and pretend that I was there.

I like to make places. For me its about being where I am, having somekind of relationship with a place and telling it's story. What I do is get myself into a place, take materials, make drawings, start making things, channeling things that have to do with that place. I love history, the history that is between the cracks.

These recent paintings using trees as subject matter are a close-up lens on the tree as symbol. My trees exist in the three worlds, with the branches in the heavens, the trunk in the world we inhabit, and the roots in the underworld. Trees are symbolic in many cultures; from Christian and Jewish mythology, to ancient Egypt’s “Holy Sycamore” which stood at the gate of life and death, to the Mayan culture’s “Yaxche,” which has branches that hold up the heavens.