This series of paintings and drawings explores variations of meaning and imagery suggested by the title phrase. "Growth" suggests gradual development (or mutation) in size or complexity; "Pattern" may refer to a plan or diagram, a discernible system or order of events, characteristic traits of behavior, or a decorative or natural design. Of interest to me are the simultaneous references to art and nature implied by the conjoining of these two words.

Interactions between lacquer and acetone form the visual and conceptual underpinnings of this series. Chance or random effects combined with formal elements evoke cell-like forms that serve a dual purpose: as model for investigating pattern and variation, and as analogue to existential paradoxes. If art results from a mediation between experience and observation - between our existence as participants in the world and our existence as thinkers about the world, at one extreme approaching documentation and at the other extreme approaching philosophy - then I consider these images, through their combination of form and process, to index such mediation; not quite one and not quite the other.