Surface Memory is an ongoing body of abstract paintings built through accumulation, pressure, and revision. I develop each surface gradually through pouring, transfer, staining, scraping, veiling, drawing, erasure, and rebuilding. I press, drag, lift, cover, and recover paint as the image develops. Earlier decisions remain visible as residue, worn edges, buried color, abrasions, and shifts in texture. The surface becomes a record of what has happened to it, with different moments of the painting's history remaining active at the same time.

My approach grew from an early training in printmaking, where pressure, reversal, transfer, and indirect processes shaped the way I learned to think about images. In painting, chance often starts a passage, while revision gives the work its structure. I may allow fluid paint to spread or collide, then interrupt what has happened through transfer, scraping, drawing, or translucent layers. Geometric forms sometimes act as temporary anchors, while atmospheric and organic passages pull the painting back toward instability. I want enough structure to hold the painting together, but not so much that the image becomes settled or predictable.

In the newest works, fragments sometimes approach recognition. A plant, partial body, vessel, geometric structure, number, or mythic form may appear briefly and then dissolve back into the larger field. I usually do not begin with a complete image in mind. What matters is the moment when something becomes almost recognizable, when the eye begins to name what it sees and then has to reconsider. Figurative, organic, and geometric associations can coexist within the same painting, while abstraction remains the ground that holds them together.

My experience as an art educator and museum educator gave me a long familiarity with mythology and visual histories, and some of those forms have begun to enter the paintings indirectly. Lately, memory, aging, generational change, and disappearance have become harder to ignore. I think about what persists as circumstances change, what becomes obscured, and what can unexpectedly return. Those concerns enter the paintings through accumulation, erasure, partial recognition, and the visible evidence of revision.

The title Surface Memory describes both my process and the way I experience the finished paintings. Each work holds traces of what came before while remaining open to another reading. I think of the paintings as partially constructed and partially discovered. Perception keeps shifting as one passage gives way to another, and meaning develops through time spent looking. My current question is how much recognition a painting can hold while remaining fundamentally abstract.