Creativity & Resourcefulness

Scavengers I, II, III, 2014. Mixed media on wood panels.

I've always been something of scavenger. Many artists are. Curiosity, a delight in discovery, a practical need for materials prod us out, seeking. One never knows what one will find. One can only imagine what one might do with it. This is part of the reason I believe that creativity and resourcefulness are linked and overlapping qualities.

There is a certain alchemy to image-making. Transformation is part and parcel of the creative process. Here, for example, a combination of minerals and oil take the form of clouds and grasses, planks and trees, birds and human beings. Further still, they come together in an illusion of space, where time unfolds.

Dawn or dusk? I often work with these transitional times of day. But this light is rather eerie, suggesting the strange incandescence we experience during Fire Season in the West. I did want to evoke some sense of disaster -if not immediate, than in the recent past. This landscape, and its inhabitants are in need of refreshment and recovery. And why not place those crows, those diligent and ubiquitous scavengers in the foreground, as models for their human companions, also seeking?