Kinship is a two-sided coin both celebratory and uneasy. Using photographs taken by a brownie camera, I made art of my small family and a larger one: beloved relatives with their farm landscape and shared home. I was probing the nature of the generations!

The first oil paintings focused on my beginnings, my mother, and her family of origin led by her invisible presence in the studio. In a large painting are the young aunts and uncles of my childhood posed by the barn -- precursors of their later personalities. These images in gray, black and white are gentle, prescient and sometimes foreboding.

I rediscovered an adored grandmother when I found her formal wedding portrait. Using mixed media and assemblage I pivoted from realism to more surreal spaces while imagining her as a young bride. Then with the farm landscape and house interiors I reclaimed long-buried treasures. Is this why the farm sights, sounds, aromas — even furnishings — are still vivid despite spending my subsequent life in urban centers? These intimate interiors are a mirror of my family and how they moved -- without their presence!

Each series laid out the conceptual perimeters for my next phase of work, marked by varied materials, paint application and scale. Art history provided companions along the way -- Guston and Dunham -- models for a dialogue with the figural versus the gestural and abstract. All the while using memory to speak about the present in universal terms, adding a cultural weight to my art making.