Reading Tea Leaves

This series of drawings loosely titled "Reading Tea Leaves" is so named due to the fact that each sheet of Arches handmade paper is prepared by spilling in rhythmic fashion coffee and tea over the surface of the page and then manipulated and dried in the sun. These "stains" are then "read" similarly to locating animal forms in the clouds or taking a Rorschach test (which is defined in Webster's as "a personality and intelligence test in which a subject interprets inkblot designs in terms that reveal intellectual and emotional factors").

A group of images (hawks, horses, falcons, Egyptian goddesses, Eskimo heads, Tibetan drawings from the Blue Beryl Treatise, nerve tissue, etc.) are then matched with the various markings in the space of these pages. Washes with Japanese and India inks are worked with text and ink drawings to begin the movements in and out of the illusory space of the page. Overlaid images are then placed using casein paint and casein emulsions with powdered pigment glazes. Casein is a milk based paint which offers the possibility of both a matte and translucent surface. The spatial qualities investigated address the different ways of seeing, in the hopes of negotiating the boundaries between perception and cognition.