Artist Statement

Luminosity is essential to my work. Over the years, I have created minimalist landscape paintings, abstract meditative compositions, views of New York's buildings, streets and gardens as well as sculptures, prints and drawings. 

My Libretto works feature multiple layers of lines, each drawn and painted by hand onto shimmering gold  and metal leafed canvasses. Etched into wet transparent paint, these lines allow the intensive glow and energy of the underlying gold and metal to reflect outwards through the paint. The gently undulating variations and linear rhythms of the lines create a sensation of calm.  Merging reading, writing and painting, these works invite contemplative looking over time comparable to listening to a musical score.

My ongoing Confinement Gardens series developed during the Covid 19 pandemic. As the virus was surging in New York, I sought relief from the lockdown restrictions by walking through the city’s public parks and gardens. Witnessing the powerful emergence of waves of flowers during the spring blooming, I felt so hopeful despite everything. Impressions of my garden walks emerged in my usually nonfigurative Libretto compositions, and I began adding floral and leaf forms to my abstract linear patterns. 

The carved wood sculptures in the Timber series evolved from my earlier minimalist landscape paintings and are also inspired by light and nature. In these sculptures I strive to express the inner power, strength and expansive potential of the original trees, thwarted as they are by having been reduced to construction lumber. Working with my deceased father’s tools, I carve deep into the planed lumber following the linear grain of the wood in search of the branches enclosed inside the beams to free the tree within. The wood is stained and sealed. The knots where the sap used to run mark where the branches were amputated and are sealed in luminous 23 K gold leaf. 

Born in Paris to Canadian parents, I grew up in Quebec City, and earned an MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, before moving to New York City, where I continue to work in my Harlem studio.