Over the past 25 years, I have worked with clay paper, plaster, fabrics such as quilts, sticks and stitching to create unusual and rocky exteriors on my canvases. My intent in painting is to begin with a fabric that inspires my nature to explore its possibilities as an interesting texture. I start with an empty canvas, board or paper, then apply an initial layer of a silk sari from Pakistan or an old quilt fragment from a friend or perhaps plaster that has sand added or sticks embedded then sanded down to reveal a different layer underneath.

     In the 60's I lived in Lahore, Pakistan with my husband and 3 young sons, an experience which enriched my life, gave me pause to become enchanted with a very different culture, its music, color, patterns, the poverty even. A friend there gave me her old saris, finely woven and embroidered silk or cotton. After a time I was able to cut them up and use them with my art, if only to give them a new life, a new meaning with the inspiration for a painting.

      One hot, summer day after settling in Shasta Valley with my family I happened to collect a bundle of rabbit brush and St. John's Wart bringing them home to cook and extract the color for dyeing wool which I was spinning. Thus began my search for color and experiments with mordents and color layering, and knowledge of roadside plant materials for use in dyeing. My ensuing work in weaving and basket making cultivated my desire for texture and attention to a surface interest in my current work in oil painting. Thus, I believe in the importance of layers as part of my process in painting, as it is in geologic time, a working with upheavals and tearing down again, then building up to create a historical formation.