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Artist Statement:

This show is different from my last one Ride Hard Wear a Bra. I took similar themes:  motorcycles, sassy pin-up girls and motorcycle parts, but used a different technique. The last series had more of a pulp fiction feel.  Large flat layers of paint very graphic and dramatic but missing the expression of a paint brush. The paintings were large and full of witty juxtapositions Ride Hard Sell Tupperware, Ride Hard Eat Spam.  The results were successful but I was missing, well, painting! The get down and dirty, messing with mediums, destroying & reconstructing¦my sassy fifties style work was great for pin-up girl magazines but I wanted to paint again!

10W30 was a fun series to create.  After finishing a two-week motorcycle journey down to Northern California and up the Oregon Coast, I was charged up and ready to paint!  Using various transfer techniques with wintergreen oil and stamping with wood blocks, along with good old fashion brush strokes, acrylic paint, lots of lacquer, gel, resin, and yes! motorcycle oil the work took on a whole new life.  The paintings have a vintage feel full of strength and femininity a millennium twist on classical methods. The process was tempestuous and meditative.  It reminded me of riding really, really fast.
 
I love repetition and simplicity in color.  The palette of the 50's and 60's reflect the era from which I took my girls - carnelian reds, mustard yellows, avocado greens and robin's egg blues.  The women from this era (to me) were the epitome of sensuality.  Not implanted or surgically altered.  They were the real thing with a real woman's body.  The curves, the innocence of a provocative glance, the fetish-like brassieres; it was all about voluptuousness.  I looked through old lingerie catalogues and discovered the women that you see in front of you.  I mixed and matched taking a head from one, the bust of another, the gaze from somewhere else and created Bombshell, Flower Girl, Bra Girl and Star Girl.

I love those old brassieres!  Iron clad bras from another time but strikingly similar to the voluptuous nature of a motorcycle hmmmmm I liked this already.  I started to dig deeper into the motorcycle and it's parts.  Ripping apart the chassis, checking out the tools that fix the bikes, finding the parts that make the motorcycle purrrrrrr knowing that somehow these two things were connected for me.  The women and the motorcycles and those damn ironclad brassieres and then I discovered lubrication!

Yes, the motorcycle oil.  The dirtier the better.  I approached a few of my motorcycle mechanic friends and we talked about oil and viscosity.  They laughed when they heard I wanted to paint with the grimy shlop they drained from the engine but they didn't see why I couldn't use motorcycle oil in my work.  Thus began a series of tests.  After two months, the canvasses were still intact and looking fabulous.  The oil was working with this new style of painting. I took oil from a 1998 BMW R1100R, 1971 Honda Trail 70, 1995 Suzuki GSXR, 1992 Harley Davidson Road King, 1982 Honda Magna 750 and a few more I can't remembe, and started adding small amounts of it to my paint.