| |
Using
painting, drawing and abstraction as markers of a space outside of the verbal
and within the visible, my work examines slow and sensate exchanges between
perception, matter, and psychology that develop in peripheral spaces over time.
Searching for meaning in the minor and the overlooked, my practice works on
dislocating hierarchical terms of the sublime to focus on the links between
perception and emotion as they unfold in unspoken events of cognitive
illumination. Each piece is developed slowly through stages of meditative
procedures, abrupt change, and actions of chance, working towards creating a
compressed expanse of time that echoes the intense shifts in which we
"see", both inwardly and outwardly. The works open a gradually
revealing field for optical intensities, luminous intervals, individual
discoveries, and opportunities for slowness.
My approach to art making is informed by painting's older history as a
devotional practice of imbuing the surface with intention and also Minimalism's
consideration of the perceptual body while experiencing an artwork. It is
important for me to create a space of exchange between the material object of
the painting or drawing and the viewer. When the works are viewed from
different distances, they move between familiar structures from interior
spaces, reticent abstract form, intense optical networks, and an intimate sense
of materiality, creating visual fields that seek specific resonance while
resisting closure.
The paintings are created through numerous layers and erasures of oil painting,
sanding, staining and cutting into a plaster-like ground. As I work on each
piece over several months, the absorption of meditative time, illumination, and
change become inscribed in the lifespan of the work. The particular nature of
the fresco like surface suggests a historic gravity as religious and epic
subjects are replaced with an elevation of the minor experiences that are the
subject of each piece. With around four paintings
developing over a year in my studio, my drawing practice spins off, supports,
and broadens the ideas central to my work. This consists of the large works on paper, the remainders, and the traces.
The mixed media works on paper draw extend from the paintings, expanding on
fields before or after the illuminated unfoldings within the paintings, offering different
possibilities through their differing material processes. These works are
created slowly, almost blindly, while absorbing time, pressure, and marks
formed beneath and between the everyday activities of making the paintings,
further foregrounding what was once peripheral. Reflecting a similar process as the
paintings, they are painted, marked, sanded, erased, built upon, carved into,
and worked on top of each other and on both sides. These works offer an
opportunity to trace elements that echo the meditative stages, passages of
time, or chance actions that get absorbed into the paintings.
The remainders are graphite rubbings made of
the paintings. Every time the surface of the paintings changes significantly, a
graphite impression is made to transcribe the surface. The set of remainders
made for each painting stays together as one piece and are shown
chronologically, left to right. As sedimentary events, they materialize forms
within the paintings that have become invisible, partial, or erased. These
works map the transitive passages of the paintings, becoming their indexes,
unfolding time in a sequence while asserting the materiality of the paintings.
The traces are similar to monoprints,
pieces made from either the surface of the paintings or from beneath the works
on paper. These works are a way to capture the potentials—stages, ideas,
poetics—that surface and are then subsumed in the development of the paintings,
and to assert momentary flashes of visibility within the dense aggregation of
time in the paintings. Countering the starkness of the remainders and the worked
nature of the paintings and works on paper, the are created in color and
include one to three actions and no surface manipulation.
|
 |