Artist Statement
Recently, my work has concentrated on issues of aging, specifically my mother in her time with Alzheimer's. After a lifetime of knowing her, her end years impress me the most. The work honors her imaginal journeying that lengthens my life backwards in favor of her long ago and respects the reversal of trust from me in her to her in me.
What I see in elders is the individuality of character that has required the accumulation of years of experience deepening into the complexities, mysteries, and unique perceptions that come with aging. Flesh is where the invisible in us eventually becomes visible through the wrinkles of time.
Body and Cloth is another subject of interest to me. Either cloth is in concert with the body or cloth takes on its own alchemical dance of transformation. With the bodies I mean to capture something of the significance and strength of character that has been gained by lasting through uncertainties and vulnerabilities within the forces of life and death. The bodies and cloth are meant to perform similar conditions metaphorically as they knot and loosen in emotional tying up and releasing. I see the folds as sensuous, turning in on themselves, taking unique, never to happen again forms, mimicking how each person’s composite traits and qualities are distinctly their own.
I also paint the cloth with only the impression of the body. I mean those images to portray intimate records of physical presence, beings that were there and are no more. They are left over representations that have very little identity attached to them, only impressions or indications in the cloth of someone remaining while gone. Several meanings can be applied. One is that the paintings and drawings are characterizations of the struggle to accept the departure of loved ones and the eventual nonexistence of the self.
What I see in elders is the individuality of character that has required the accumulation of years of experience deepening into the complexities, mysteries, and unique perceptions that come with aging. Flesh is where the invisible in us eventually becomes visible through the wrinkles of time.
Body and Cloth is another subject of interest to me. Either cloth is in concert with the body or cloth takes on its own alchemical dance of transformation. With the bodies I mean to capture something of the significance and strength of character that has been gained by lasting through uncertainties and vulnerabilities within the forces of life and death. The bodies and cloth are meant to perform similar conditions metaphorically as they knot and loosen in emotional tying up and releasing. I see the folds as sensuous, turning in on themselves, taking unique, never to happen again forms, mimicking how each person’s composite traits and qualities are distinctly their own.
I also paint the cloth with only the impression of the body. I mean those images to portray intimate records of physical presence, beings that were there and are no more. They are left over representations that have very little identity attached to them, only impressions or indications in the cloth of someone remaining while gone. Several meanings can be applied. One is that the paintings and drawings are characterizations of the struggle to accept the departure of loved ones and the eventual nonexistence of the self.