After working as a ceramic artist for more than twenty years creating wall sculptures and commissioned installation work, I decided to pursue a long time interest in abstract painting. Therefore the last several years of my art career have been spent studying and developing works on canvas. Surface development became more of a focal point for me while working in clay so it was a natural progression to move from painting on clay to painting on canvas using acrylics in place of glazes.

I usually begin a painting without preconceived ideas or intentions, working spontaneously without regard to specific thoughts or realistic forms. I simply begin a painting by putting paint on a canvas using brushes, scrapers, water bottles or other objects that find their way into my studio, working quickly and intuitively. As I experiment and play in this way I will eventually notice something that I want to work with, shapes, forms, textures or color combinations that appeal to me. is the point at which I begin to discern, work more slowly and methodically developing the painting. As this process continues certain areas of the painting will start to lose their appeal or other areas might still feel undeveloped. This is when I will go back into those areas and again work spontaneously, quickly and without deliberation, as I did in the beginning of the painting. I work back and forth in a painting like this for some time until gradually it becomes resolved. I paint because I love the process and I love to see what appears before me. It is as much of a surprise to me as it is to the viewer.

See Gail’s curriculum vitae CV here.