Wall Relief

This is the bottom section of a piece entitled wall relief, 80" x 60", sold in 1989 to a young couple in Georgetown. That is me, adding some pastel marks. I have used the title 'Wall Relief" many times, possibly because I find myself staring at the layering of peeled posters, paint, marks. layers...on the walls of subways as a student outside NY in the 60'sand later, gutters, streets. walls. Any place that has been used to leave messages, posters, announcements... any area that collects the detritus of passing ideas, uses, garbage... the stuff of the presence of humans.
The process of staring at something for a long time has always served as a way of getting in.. into this space of deep seeing... a kind of inner knowing that leads toward something as a descreet space, in and of itself. Nothing more is needed. As a process that begins as building and layering, it soon becomes reducing, removing, excavating , and then I add the last bits of the direct marks.. annotations? Maybe the marks are the faint scratches of meaning, or just wear and tear of the surface.
The idea of the impact of the larger compositional image drawing the viewer into the tiny detailed marks as part of the meditative process is completely stolen from somewhere. The lack of content, other than what is imposed or projected by the viewer is intentional. In the correct sense of the word 'abstract', my work is not an abstraction of a place or person.. it is the abstract representation of the process of seeing and thinking about space, the arena of the plate, the screatio of three dimensions in a two dimensional space, the process of adding and removing...
I work until I am satisfied that there is sufficient information...or until I am too tired to go on. As this image is built, I bury the initial layers. Each layer is like a geological strata, one that holds the expression of that moment of seeing. As each layer is part of a last/next process, a reaction to what has preceded, the choices become narrower as the piece finds its end through induction... to a state of something... a record of me thinking about something?

One time my husband, a highly educated man, who rarely noticed or commented on my work, said "Your titles are really a map of your mind. " I was not sure what he meant by that, but it seemed a good thing so I said thanks. He didn't like to talk much about my ideas. He was sort of an effete aesthete. He felt that there were enough amateurs in the world and depised mediocrity. So maybe I was having a private conversation with myself about what I was reading and thinking about when I was working for hours alone in my studio?

My work is about ideas about reflection and expression of the nature of being, separate yet connected to the world around us. It is about the physical relationship of the scale of my gesture, the reach and arc of my arm to the surface.

Thinly veiled cries for community when I had no one to talk to about things that are happening around me? So I have decided to begin a list of the work I have done over the years ( I started titling things in 1982) and see what I can make of the 'nonlinear' ramblings of an undisciplined mind.