Artist Statement
Our bodies have become fragmented, in the same manner as the landscape we live in. Social, medical, and memory systems become more specialized, and as they do, our focus becomes more compartmentalized.
I’m interested in portraying a collage-like space created from looking at the body and land as parallel environments, each with their own mix of beauty and terror. I hope to portray a sense of coexisting disconnection that talks about our fragmented experience within these environments.
This body of work is collected from a single X-ray I received in South Africa, Google Earth residential maps of Johannesburg, and tiny areas of photographs and sketches I’ve made of my surroundings while walking in the New England landscape. The brushed India ink mark making is a translation of a personal mapping of nature and earth, of experiences both physical and emotional. The flat colour planes are specific to a personal and cultural environment. The generous areas of white space signify absence. My aim is to make these areas active so that they flip between positive and negative, or background and foreground — simulating memory shifts.
These works are very specific to place — exterior and interior — redefining landscape as an evolving relationship between experience, memory, feeling, perception, analysis, recording and the formation of personal symbols.
Medium:
India ink, Flashe and acrylic paint on polypropylene and paper.
The scale range:
site specific wall works, 6’ x 5’, to 50” x 38” and 11” x 8”.
Date:
2009 — current
