About

Warm Breezes

Warm Breezes is a series of collage paintings in which bird and flower images from napkins and tissue paper transform into beautiful scenarios of abstract nature. Fragments of sheet music, clothing patterns, cigar rings and handmade papers mix with loose abstract marks in crayon, pencil and paint. The collage elements are reflections of the past and become repurposed bits of art. Their faded colors evoke age. In contrast, the paint is vivid and provides movement. This creates a dialogue between movement and stasis, old and new. The work becomes a moment when past and present converge. Birds are true survivors who somehow diversified after mammals went extinct. These small creatures give me hope that nature can remain intact through the turbulence of climate change.

Collage Painting

I refer to my work as collage painting because it is the interaction of the two that interests me. Collage elements are by nature reflections of the past. Their faded colors evoke age. In contrast, the paint is bright, applied as loose abstract marks. It has spontaneity. A dialogue begins between old and new, movement and stasis. The work creates a moment when past and present converge. This interaction of time and texture creates a story neither could tell on its own.

Triptychs & Diptychs

My first triptych grew out of necessity. The largest canvas to fit in the backseat of my car was 36x40”. I remember painting a seascape that I wanted to continue on, so I added another canvas, and another. Over the years it became a favorite format. I like the way the canvases unfold like pages in a book. People have asked, “why not paint one long canvas?” There is a big difference. Each canvas of a multicanvas painting can stand alone. Yet when hung together, are alike and different enough to relate to one another.

Climate Change

Hurricane Sandy caused flooding in my neighborhood when it hit the New Jersey coast in 2012. For my series, Sandy, I use painted mulberry paper and newspaper images to merge two realities - the devastation of the actual event told through newspaper images and my reaction to it, told through the muddy color of paint and the chaotic brush stokes.

Rising is a series of seascapes merged with images. Its elongated proportion has the calm of an oriental screen but the images in the water turn the calm menacing. The sea charts speak of our shifting shores. The paintings reflect an uncertain future and challenge our responsibility as guardians of the planet. They voice my concern of the magnitude of natural disasters besieging our coastlines and the impact global warming and the rising seas will have on our way of life.

Fabric

Seaing uses fabric to express sea and sky. The subject of clouds, wind and tides present endless possibilities because they are in constant motion. I turned to fabric to simply and abstractly describe the sea and sky paying special attention to the fraying edges. These threads become expressive lines that give the work movement and spontaneity. The transparency of the fabric creates new colors as it overlaps.  The white background suggests clouds and reflections of light. 

The largest work, Dancing In The Light, is 6 ½ x 12 ½ feet long.  Its size embraces the viewer with color. Interfacing, a fibrous layer of wax that melts under the heat of an iron, is used to adhere the shapes to the background.

Photography

Trained as a painter, I look for a captivating composition and surprises of color and texture to invigorate the surface of the image. A Walk Home is a series of sidewalk photos taken at night, streetlights the source of light. The elements of design are somewhat whimsical—marks spray-painted on a curb, a splash of tar, a utility pole. The translucent shapes are shadows—some soft and organic, others bold and graphic. Although we think of photography capturing reality, I often like abstract photographs that make you wonder what it is you’re looking at.