Thinking backwards.  I have been accused of this before, and not always in flattering terms.  This is how I sometimes feel my life has been - I do things backwards.  Somehow by the grace of God it all works together for my good.  Maybe it is all part of the process of learning—another way that life imitates art.

It should not surprise me that this approach to life shows up in my current work:  reverse mono-printing and painting on plexiglass.  Reverse glass painting, or "Hinterglassmalerei," is an art form dating back to medieval times.  I was first introduced to it at 16 when visiting a family in Bavaria.  I was surprised and startled by the concept of it.   Why would anyone want to paint on the back side of the glass?  And yet...

Decades later, I find myself intrigued by this obscure art form.  However, I am a thoroughly modern girl.  I am not painting on glass, but on that mid-century innovation, Plexiglass.  My pigments are suspended in polymers, not oils or mineral binders.  I carve my seals on lino and print with gelatin.  With these materials, I find myself creating textural layers reminiscent of patina on aged stones, of royal vestments worn in mysterious ceremonies of power, of ancient scripts written in unknown languages.  The juxtaposition of organic patina against synthetic lucite is paradoxical—they are modern icons of an abstract nature.  They evoke medieval seals of sovereignty, or possibly neuronal connections?  Tribal shields or alien pods descending from the cosmos...what is it?  I do not know, and I like the ambiguity.   After all, I do things backwards.