JEANETTE COOK

Working as a midwife for the past 20 years has required a certain technical knowledge, a whole lot of patience and immeasurable trust in process.  Who would have thought that a degree in dance would take me down the path of birth. Every day I do the hard work of respectfully caring for women. To replenish I go to the studio. Like the art of dance and midwifery, abstract painting requires knowledge, skill, and technique.  Midwifery has taught me that each birth is unique.

Painting reveals those moments of infinite possibility, by choosing the path of the unknown. Visual poetry and asemic (language without semantic content) are seeing without looking, writing by not reading, and moving with intuitive intent. Asemic language negotiates neural pathways of a language I do not know, allowing thought to be lost in order to find that place in the brain where language has its origin. I have only recently found a place in my oil paintings for asemic language. In the end, the paintings will be what they are meant to be.