Is looking at master works by great male artists perpetuating something masculine in one's own work? I’m sick of this male genius biz, and decided to only reflect on work made by amazing women artists in this series of paintings. Paintings by women like Lee Krasner, Pat Pasloff, and Elaine de Kooning, Joan Mitchel and many others. I have a spiderplant in my kitchen, which is from a piece of Lee Krasner’s own plant. It multiplies indefinitely. Can amplifying our “foremothers” work do the same? I’m Imagining all these amazing women artists drinking coffee in a kitchen talking about their work with this spiderplant in the room making baby after baby plant

In this group of paintings for the first time, I have decided to stretch them. This is so basic to most paintings that it’s weird to even mention it, but for me arriving here really did take the long way around. First I only worked on paper, then exclusively unstretched canvas, and now 30 years later the “objectness” of a stretched canvas appeals. But what has always been unpleasant about it is the rigid edge created by the wooden stretcher. My unstretched works naturally unraveled at the edges. The softness of this transition is really important to me, so I decide to keep and accentuate the unraveled edge.

This reminds me of the home I grew up in, and my grandfather’s oriental carpet business, in Germany. He traveled to the middle east and through contacts there imported handmade rugs. His home, and also my mothers where I grew up were covered, every inch, including stairs, couches and walls, with a mosaic of oriental rugs, saddle bags, and other small woven textiles to adorn camels and horses. I can’t help but think that these works with the fringe around the edge remind me of these rugs. The process of unraveling the canvas is like reverse weaving.

Drilling down on the basics of my materials, these works are all made with home made oil paint. In the slowness of grinding dry pigment into linseed oil, gazing at it for 30 minutes straight, the nuance of color comes into focus. The smallest interactions and temperature of color in each piece is something I really focused on.