My father was a landscape painter with an unusual color palette. One of my pleasures growing up, was sitting in his studio watching him paint. I never tired of looking at his paintings. The way he used color fascinated me. His influence led me to begin my creative life as a landscape painter. I was obsessed with contrasting colors and light, always looking for unexpected combinations. I juxtaposed architectural features with natural forms, rolling hills and stands of trees. I wanted to do something new with color and unexpected lighting that would turn ordinary landscapes into luminous scenes.

For the last decade or so I have concentrated on ceramic sculpture as a way to express my ideas about the links between non-humans and humans. I am looking for ways to stretch reality and create metaphors for the mysterious connections I see everywhere. This has led to unexpected combinations of animals and human beings; animals riding animals, the riders of indeterminate origin, animals and humans interacting in unexpected ways, many of them expressing what we think of as human emotions but all with a recognizable human dimension. This is a reality of emotions and connections that may not always be visible in day to day life, but that exists somewhere in space and time. I build using slabs and coils and more recently, build solid figures and then hollow them out. I use some oxides, glazes and under glazes but concentrate more and more on paint, left over from my life as a painter. I can layer paint and change the feeling of the work, let it evolve as my imagination changes the story I want to tell. I add other media or objects to help stretch reality still further.