The composition of a painting is often described in terms of point, line, and plane. In my own work, it is line and plane that hold my attention. I think of the point as the beginning or end of a line, a pause within it, or a tiny plane; I let it dissolve into the interplay of line and plane.
In my eyes, all things are planes, joined to one another by lines both visible and invisible.
Leaves and trunk are planes; the branches are the lines that join them. The canopy and the earth are planes; the trunk becomes the line that joins them. The same form can be a plane in one relationship and a line in another. I care about the form itself, and equally about how it reaches toward what surrounds it.
Heaven and earth are planes; wind, rain, dust, and mist are the lines drifting between them. Past, present, and future are planes; memory and imagination are the lines that pass through them. Greed and fear are planes; each choice we make is a line we walk between them. Calm, joy, anger, sorrow, and fear are planes; wisdom is the line threading through these emotions. Life and death are planes; a human life is the line that joins them.
A plane has size and shape, square or round; it can be orderly or freely unfurling. A line has curve and straightness, direction and length; it can continue or break off. Their forms, and the relations between them, together make the rhythm of a painting, and carry my feeling for the world.
Through the arrangement of line and plane, I hope to show both the forms we can see and the unseen connections between them: the ties between people, the overlapping of reality and memory, the flowing of emotion, and the traces a life leaves in time.
