Mixed Media Watercolors

In many of my latest works, I am combining watercolor with non-traditional elements in an effort to push the medium beyond its traditional boundaries. I have punctured, sliced, embossed, and ripped the surface of the paper as well.

The watercolor painting Carnivorous Garden, or Les Fleurs du Mal has a piece of lead attached to the paintings surface. Dear Helen: 'till Fish Wear Raincoats uses yellow plastic raincoat material as a dominant element. Plastic pharmaceutical capsules containing small rolled-up watercolor paintings are part of the Suicide Machine for the Geriatric Beans: In Case of Emergency, Break Glass. Wake Up! Wake Up! has a rectangular hand-crocheted doily which was purchased at a street fair as its central element. Antique hand-made French lace is used as both a symbolic element and a decorative element in many of the paintings comprising the Litany series. Used diabetic test strips also appear in many works, and are indicative of my interest in the shapes, colors, textures and symbolic associations found in many non-traditional forms when taken out of their normal context and placed within a painting. The fact that the test strips are stained with human blood has led me to use them as metaphors for both the crucifixion and the stigmata, but also to indicate the burning of Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc).

The challenge of using three-dimensional objects in a painting, I find, is integrating them into the over-all composition so that they contribute to an effective visual statement, rather than breaking down the composition into interesting but chaotic parts.