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I grew up in the Catskills when dairy farms divided the valleys and slopes of the mountains into geometries of color: hayfields, pastures with cows, and two hundred years of architecture - settlements of stone and wood, from early Dutch stone dwellings to stoic, white, Greek Revival farmhouses. When I was nine, my family moved to Cape Cod where we had always summered. I worked with my father who painted the Catskill Mountains, and was a believer in pure color. My Mother, Pauline Hopkins, taught us all drawing and multi-media - she was the Chair of our five-town art department for 25 years, and an inspiring teacher. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, I continued experimental printmaking and mixed media with Anne MacCrae MacLeod at the DeCordova Museum School. I began translating landscape into geometric layers of color, reminiscent of American vernacular quilts and architecture., and building collagraphic plates of abstracted landscape and natural plant forms. Many of the geometric pieces are in corporate and private collections in New Hampshire and New England, thanks to the representation by Mary McGowan and McGowan Fine Arts in Concord, N.H. A fellowship at the McDowell Colony afforded me a departure from the geometric format; I started doing prints of “iron markings.” The geometric prints were released from their outside boundaries, becoming asymmetrical and soft-edged. I use a variety of techniques – intaglio, embossed and relief printmaking methods – often in combination, always printing my own work, alone in my studio with my press and materials. The process of exposing the beauty of each plate, through experimental inking and wiping techniques is a quiet, deep experience that comes through the work to the viewer. My newer pieces explore my emotional connections to decaying plant materials, water and sky – whether it is the Hudson River and it’s distant shores, or the waters of Cape Cod. Two things haunt me: momentary beauty and feelings of loss. Water and sky are timeless. I’ve always wanted to incorporate line drawings without using hazardous materials and processes to etch my plates. I now use solar plate-making techniques to continue that exploration.
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