Laguna College of Art + Design

For me, the word “artist” is interchangeable with the word “seeker.” I see myself as having been on this path for a lifetime, and what keeps me moving forward—adding skills, learning theory, studying history, observing nature, honing my visual acuity, and investigating the work and practices of living artists—is the endless seeking after a way to make my life experiences tangible and translatable. The compulsion to make the impermanent endure, and the unseen visible, is the driving force behind all forms of my artistic output, and it is the main purpose of this written work. This thesis is my map for the part of the pilgrimage that covers my recent experience of leaving Australia again, seeking to re-establish myself here in America, and coming to know the permanence of my husband’s family heritage in rural Illinois.

I have sought inspiration from people who seem to have known the same restless seeking. Emily Dickinson wrote prolifically in quiet isolation. Rogier van der Weyden succeeded in reaching me across the distance of five centuries. Turner went to the edge of abstraction to bring poetry, sunlight, and his awe before Nature to generations far removed from his own. Poetry is the prism through which my understanding of painting is illuminated. It is a mysterious but unwavering truth that for me painting is the embodiment of poetry, and poetry needs painting to be complete. Plutarch’s words were echoed centuries later by Leonardo da Vinci, who said: “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen” (Da Vinci 1). I adopt this as my personal ethos.