Certain of my paintings are derived from a combination of references, photographs or images of other paintings. Others are concentrated portraits of discreet objects, such as a bouquet of dead flowers, or the depiction of a jigsaw puzzle, which as paintings can push the viewer past initial recognition. These paintings are not meant to force the viewer to think through specific narratives, but rather to inspire a kind of remembering, recalling, or deja vu.
A recent series of paintings is titled:
what’s left over
where we end up is where we started
traces
All the paintings in this series are oil on linen, white paint on a black ground, and evoke the photographic negative, a photogram, or an x-ray. However, unlike any of these comparisons, the paintings are made by hand, in direct response to an object itself, in this case, a bouquet of dead flowers. Each painting in the series measures 54in x 90in, enforcing a relation to a human scale. The white paint on the black surface is transparent in parts, and the brushstrokes are present as evidence of potential life left inside what is already dead.