Masquerade, detail In my right hand I wield an 18-carat, gold-plated cake server, slicing it through the air with rapid, bold strokes. I fly back and forth, but without touching the canvas. I’m getting the motion down, rehearsing my plans for the first layer. I build up a rhythm of swooshing, passionate and diving pre-strokes. This is the heartbeat of unrestrained freedom and movement that brings each stage to life: first modeling paste, then crayons, glazes, paints, and more glazes. I scoop up modeling paste with my cake server. It’s an abandoned wedding gift, turned into a useful tool of intriguing openings. I apply, squish and manipulate the paste to create textured patterns and shapes, ever mindful of the power of untouched white space on my canvas. Once the modeling paste dries, the magic and mystery starts to evolve. Every painting is quite different yet very similar. I just never know how far I’ll go, or how soon I’ll stop. For me that’s the rush, the sensation of uninhibited discovery and contemplation. At every stage, I abandon myself again and again to the swooping freedom of rapid, fluid movements—deliberate and improvised. With lines of color flying off the canvas, with free-form fluid shapes and swatches of color bending and yielding to each other, I explore every nook and cranny on the canvas with the same explosions of summer joy I get from flying a kite by the ocean. My journey is about falling into the seduction of texture, line, color and movement – always the movement – while listening to the subtle differences between positive and negative space, to what is bold and aggressive as well as vulnerable and laid back.