“I make my work using simple, direct processes: painting colors onto canvas or fabric, cutting shapes from the painted material, then sewing the shapes onto a canvas background. When finished, I stretch the piece on a stretcher bar.

I rely on the physical qualities of my materials — canvas that is stained or marked, with raw cut edges that have a rough feeling — to evoke different associations.

The invented shapes are important elements in my compositions; they can be minimal or more layered and complicated, depending on where the work takes me. My default approach is that less is more, but occasionally I recognize that a piece requires more than less, so I follow the direction the work in progress suggests, participating in the discovery and development it inspires.

My intention is not to make serial work; instead I repeat or elaborate using a loose, invented visual vocabulary of forms, trusting my subconscious to guide these repetitions and elaborations so that the forms evolve into variations. These variations develop into their own distinctive sub-series within this larger, ongoing body of “sewn paintings.” People tell me that the shapes I use suggest machines, organs, tools, utensils and aerial views.

I work by intuition or feeling, using a sensibility I’ve developed over time to guide me, rather than my critical mind. In this way I’ve eliminated some of the internal thinking, which for me can get in the way. I do my work, one piece at a time, trying to have no expectations — just an open heart for what is to come.

My own intention is at the heart of each piece I make, but ultimately each painting speaks its own language. When I make art, I have something to say, however, when I stand before a finished work, it has something to say to me. And if the painting works, it speaks not in my voice but in a universal language." Jonathan Parker