I find myself at 51 in an deep editing versus gathering mode of life. I find joy in giving things away and limiting objects entering my life. I have no drive to produce art as product. I am no longer interested in the effort of showing my work in a formal setting; no longer interested in the framing, the hanging, the opening, the storing of pieces of unsold art. But this summer I find myself missing the process of making images. So I have decided to make work simply in a notebook. Small studies using man-made and natural rulers to investigate the nature of the repeated mark or line. Inspired by the restraint of Agnes Martin, I search for a more obvious yet subtle approach to studying natural form. Many of these were made by tracing Maple and Fir branches, large honeysuckle vines and beach stones. The marks although attempting an order of spacing are casual, even rough. Imperfections are accepted, but not pursued. Somehow through this repeated tracing of the small, larger landscapes come to fore. This fascinates me. I am not attempting to draw "something", I am just setting up rules and following them. The image is purely accidental. Therefore these are more of a residue from meditating on the nature of things than an attempt of replication.
