ANCIENT POP

This series began as an act of looking closely. As I paint ancient Zuni pottery, time begins to slow around me. I follow each line, curve, and repetition until the designs no longer feel decorative, but alive with memory and intention. The forms carry a quiet authority—simultaneously grounded, elegant, and enduring. Nothing is accidental. Color, balance, movement, and space exist in careful relation, as though each surface holds its own internal breath.

As I work, pattern begins to shift into rhythm, and rhythm into something resembling language. The pottery feels less like artifact and more like a form of ancestral poetry—composed not through self-expression, but through observation, continuity, and an intimate relationship with the natural world. Each design seems to hold generations of thought carried silently through the hand.

The process of painting becomes meditative, almost devotional. I am not trying to improve, possess, or reinterpret these forms, but to remain present with them long enough to listen. Through repetition and attention, the work opens itself slowly. Paint becomes a way of entering conversation with those who came before me—a conversation carried through clay, geometry, movement, and time.

With each painting, I become more aware that meaning does not always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it exists quietly within form, waiting patiently to be seen.