Fusion Art

I lived in a farming village in the Katmandu Valley of Nepal and made a film about art in that country while painting a series of landscape paintings. Nepal is a country the size of Tennessee with 550 separate languages. From the jungles in the south to Mt. Everest in the north, it’s not an easy place to get around. Nepal had no western influences until the late 60's. (I was there just 10 years later, in 1979, before running water or reliable electricity.) Traditional arts (on the streets and in the temples) had to transcend language and cultures to influence a very diverse group of people. This explains why some of the traditional artwork is so powerful.

I was most attracted to and influenced by the Nepalese use of color. I believe the strong color captures and helps to convey an emotional truth and transport the viewer. For me color is an essential part of visual language.

My paintings are really a ‘fusion art,’ the visual counterpart to today’s modern fusion music. It’s not really ‘outsider art’ because I’m not self taught. I have a fine art degree in painting and in film making. But the influences that changed my life and made my artwork such a fusion started with my trip to Nepal and the decision to study art through cultural anthropology. After that I traveled extensively and worked on an archeology site on the coast of Washington state and spent years in New Mexico.