CONJURED MEMORIES

My current drawings are visual narratives that capture fragments and recreate moments of childhood memories and anxieties. They reveal intimate and sometimes awkward scenes that focus on the relationship and experience of growing up around my schizophrenic grandfather. These life size drawings are fueled by personal fears, confusions, anxieties, frustrations, and the vulnerabilities of childhood.

Images of tumbling kittens, broken chairs, little girls, and distressed men strive to connect with each other while sharing an inner life at odds with reality. They explore an internal world unrestricted by logic or structure that conveys an underlying sense of anxiety and uncertainty.

The tactility of charcoal and smoothness of acrylic gesso evokes and blurs forms to create solidity and space. Large white expanses suggest the transitive nature of memory juxtaposed against anxiously marked areas of visual and psychological interest. Aggressive marks, erasures, and veils of acrylic create realistic and abstract moments frozen in time.

I intend for these frozen moments of childhood memories to intimately and physically engage the viewer with the work. These narratives are personal observations of the human condition that present an immediate and intimate, tangible expression of memory.

TRANSFORMATIONS

These portraits are about deconstruction, transformation, and reconstruction of the self. The personal struggle within manifests itself in a violent, visceral physicality both with imagery and paint application. The viewer is confronted with a transformative portrait that conveys a psychologically intense representation of the human condition.

DECOMPOSITIONS

This work focuses on the decomposition of the visceral, the natural preservation that takes place, and of how the body then becomes part of the landscape. The raw flesh goes beyond the representational concerns of a still life and becomes a metaphor as visceral organic iceberg formations dominating the unspoiled natural world and reminding us of our own mortality.

The beauty of the grotesque subject matter is emphasized, as well as the physicality and seductive nature of the paint itself. Emotional resonance is achieved through the physicality of paint application, muted color, and the vast expanse of the landscape. These paintings appear as a frozen moment in time in which they ground the viewer in the here and now.

The figurative forms appear as if they have been in this desolate landscape over a long period of time where it suggests desperation, a loss of hope, and a disconnection between the body and environment, These paintings explore feelings of isolation, physicality and seduction, the juxtaposition of the visceral with the desolate, and celebrate the duality of repulsion and attraction to evoke an emotional response in the viewer.

This series of oil paintings focus on the physicality and scale of raw flesh placed in a vast expanse of a frozen landscape. The raw flesh goes beyond the representational concerns of a still life and becomes a metaphor as visceral, organic iceberg formations dominating the unspoiled natural world and reminding us of our own mortality.

In these works the objects define the space in which they are placed, the use of light and shadow create negative and positive spaces, while organic biomorphic forms emerge and dissolve back into the atmosphere. The beauty of the grotesque subject matter is emphasized, as well as the physicality and seductive nature of the paint itself. These paintings appear as a frozen moment in time in which they ground the viewer in the here and now.

I am concerned with the process of painting and having a sense of immediacy to how the paint is applied to the surface, and depicting an honest reaction to the observed subject matter. I depict raw flesh for its associations with the sensuality of the figure, implied violence, and mortality. These paintings explore feelings of isolation, physicality and seduction, the juxtaposition of the visceral with the desolate, and celebrate the duality of repulsion and attraction to evoke an emotional response in the viewer.

VISCUS

INTERIOR LANDSCAPES

These paintings represent the interior of the body as a landscape. I wanted to create organic forms that investigate the anatomy of the human body. Visceral images of the intestines, gallbladder, and other internal organs deal with issues of space, form, and texture, all of which are important qualities for this painting.

Initially I began the compositions with surgical photographs as a source. The compositions were then manipulated to create a sense of depth using the images of the intestines and organs. The most important goal for theses painting is how the surface of the paint interacts with the imagery and creates a sense of depth and space. The viewer is able to travel through the space of the interior of the body.

I am not going after the idea of “shock-value” with this body of work. Instead I am interested in taking “grotesque” subject matter and making it physically “beautiful”. This is done with composition, choice of palette, and paint application. The visceral paint application engages the viewer and creates the desire to touch the surface of the painting.

The imagery is abstracted into a compressed ambiguous view of the interior body with no reference to the exterior surface. This is important to create a sense of depth and to be more specific to how it is interpreted by the viewer. It is not imperative for the viewer to recognize it as the interior at first. He/She should investigate the space and painting surface to come to that conclusion.

MIXED MEDIA / COLLAGE

OTHER FIGURATIVE WORK

VISUAL JOURNALS