As a painter who believes in the language of abstraction, I think of my works as social bodies. My paintings, like garments, are manipulated by cutting, folding, weaving, printing, puckering, painting, and staining. They, like clothing, are both representational surfaces and dimensional objects, scaled to the human form. And, like a body, my works incorporate the logic of balance, and the inquiry asymmetry can propose.
Although Roland Barthes spoke about humanity’s general condition, writing, “work is a defense against mortality”, my personal cancer experience and the pandemic drive and give subjectivity to my practice. Through my works, trauma and renewal pose questions about the duality of strength and vulnerability and their emotive counterparts of disability and healing, hope and generosity.
Distinguishing my works from each other are three visual constructs organized into series: reduction through cut surfaces; light and darkness of hue gradations; and the layering of materials. These constructs of open and closed spaces, color, and interwoven surfaces and structures, act as conduits portending visual pathways forward.