I am a geometric abstract artist. My work is inspired by my desire to find balance in my artwork and in my life. Geometry holds so much logic and truth within its parameters. In my paintings, I aim to touch on those truths, while also challenging them: creating the appearance of dimensional spaces, and then throwing off the logic by allowing them to not always make sense.
My paintings and collages are intentionally non-objective, but the imagery might stir dormant associations, perhaps the flavor of a piece of fruit, the sensuality of a flower, the tactile quality of a piece of velvet or the slippery transparency of water. Working with disparate elements, I often break apart the surface of a painting and reassemble it, to create compositions that are part chance, part careful deliberation.
I was born in the U.S. and raised in various African countries, and my work is influenced by a passion for handmade textiles from around the world. I love evidence of the human hand in the happenstance that takes place in the making of a repetitive design, the breaks in line or variations in a repetitive pattern. In my own work, I aim to fuse a traditional handmade sensibility with contemporary aesthetics rooted in minimalism and non-objective imagery.
I studied Fine Arts at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and at SACI in Florence, Italy, later I studied art education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. When I'm not in my studio painting, I run "Petrune Vintage", a clothing store, and "The Petrune Gallery", an art exhibition space in Ithaca, NY. I am co-founder of the Cayuga Arts Collective, a nonprofit organization for artists in the Finger Lakes Region of New York.
