Artist Statement
Artist Statement
Recently, my work has concentrated on issues of aging, specifically my mother in her time with Alzheimer's. After a lifetime of knowing her, her end years impress me the most. The work honors her imaginal journeying that lengthens my life backwards in favor of her long ago and respects the reversal of trust from me in her to her in me.
What I see in elders is the individuality of character that has required the accumulation of years of experience deepening into the complexities, mysteries, and unique perceptions that come with aging. Flesh is where the invisible in us eventually becomes visible through the wrinkles of time.
Body and Cloth is another subject of interest to me. Either cloth is in concert with the body or cloth takes on its own alchemical dance of transformation. With the bodies I mean to capture something of the significance and strength of character that has been gained by lasting through uncertainties and vulnerabilities within the forces of life and death. The bodies and cloth are meant to perform similar conditions metaphorically as they knot and loosen in emotional tying up and releasing. I see the folds as sensuous, turning in on themselves, taking unique, never to happen again forms, mimicking how each person’s composite traits and qualities are distinctly their own.
I also paint the cloth with only the impression of the body. I mean those images to portray intimate records of physical presence, beings that were there and are no more. They are left over representations that have very little identity attached to them, only impressions or indications in the cloth of someone remaining while gone. Several meanings can be applied. One is that the paintings and drawings are characterizations of
Selected Exhibitions
o What We Hold Onto, Black Cube Museum, Englewood, CO, 2025
o Mother Lasting, Solo, Art Bank, McCook, NE, 2025
o Art of the State, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO, 2025 (Best of Show Award)
o Spotlight on Art, Series of paintings of my mother, Dementia Spring, 2024
o Roots, Art About Family, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2024
o Nude, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2024
o Mother Lasting, solo, Firehouse Art Center, Longmont, CO, 2024
o From Me in Her to Her in Me, Solo, Dairy Art Center, Boulder, CO, 2023
o Lasting Impressions, Solo, Tointon Gallery, Greeley, CO, August 18–Sept 16, 2023
o Drawn; from the Source, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO, 2023
o Art of the State, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO, 2022
o Pink Progression; In Skin, Curator, exhibiting artist, Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, 2021
o Viral Influences, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO, 2021
o Pink Progression Collaborations, Middle of the Story (with Tree Bernstein) Arvada Center, 2020
o Folding In, Solo Exhibition at Recreative, Denver, 2019
o In Search of Why We Draw, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Denver, 2019
o Murmuration’s, First Congregational Church, Boulder, CO, 2019
o Repositioning, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Denver, CO, 2019
o Pink Progression Exhibitions, Boulder Public Library, Denver Public Library, Center for Visual Arts, 2018
o Counterpoint, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Denver, CO, 2018
o Conflict, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, Arvada, CO, 2017
o Director's Choice, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Denver, CO, 2017
o Small But Mighty, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Denver, CO, 2016
o CSArt Colorado, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO, 2016
o Local Folks, Firehouse Art Center, History of Boulder County Arts, Longmont, CO, 2016
o Conscious And Unconscious: Subjects of the Real & Surreal, Arvada Center, 2015
o Color Matters, Sandra Phillips Gallery, March 20–May 2, 2015
o Cloth, Irene Delka McCray and Virginia Maitland, Sandra Phillips Gallery, 2013
o Soft Subversions, Pirate Contemporary Art, Denver, 2013
o New Beginnings, Gallery Artists in New Location, Sandra Phillips Gallery, 2013
o Threads, Irene Delka McCray and Barbara Groh, Sandra Phillips Gallery, Denver, CO, 2012
o out FIGURED, Outcry, outcast, outlandish, left out, Center for Visual Art, Denver, CO, 2012
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