I’m interested in using a material’s inherent qualities to help me to develop ideas about how to work with it. Having learned sewing as a young girl from my mother and grandmother, working with it as a “painting” medium feels natural to me. Each painting begins with the relationship between two or three fabrics – their color, texture or pattern. The painting develops as I take the pieces of fabric apart (by cutting) and put them back together (by sewing) over and over again. Unlike quilting, I do not find pieces of scrap fabric and make arrangements to sew together. I begin working in a very intuitive and meditative way; the arrangement of the shapes develops slowly and is a result of the choices I make. Some of my interests that influence these choices include: shifts in size and scale such as small pieces next to big pieces; and pushing the fabric to its limits…how much can I cut it and sew it back together? The painting changes dramatically when I stretch it over the stretcher. This process is just as important to me as sewing the pieces together. I’m interested in the tension on the seams and the changes that happen to the shapes. The nature of this work is that the pieces often end up resembling landscapes, maps and other visual phenomena that occur when man and nature occupy the same space.