My father was an Episcopal minister. When I was a boy I liked to look at the altar cloths in his church and think about how I might design them. I noticed that throughout the year the colors of the cloths would change depending on the religious calendar. Some weeks the linens were green, others red then purple and so on. Although these paintings aren’t intended to be religious I wonder if my early experience in my father’s church was an influence.

I started making cross paintings more than 10 years ago and have worked on them intermittently ever since. The singular cross paintings are from 2012, and the multi-colored patchwork cross paintings are from 2019-2020.

I’m thinking of the cross as a centering device and a structure to explore color.

I select colors intuitively and strive to never have a color repeat. If there are four reds or five blues or three greens on a canvas none of them are the same.

“I like to think of works of art as having the same drawing power as the lighted hearth in the kitchen or the lone cross in the corner of a monk’s cell.” -Katherine Bradford