Without warning, natural disaster has the capacity to completely ravage and disrupt the terrain; the fissure is at once erasing and revealing. The interior world of the body also represents the unknown and the uncontrollable, just as our physical environment does. When illness or distress manifest, they permanently alter the landscapes of our bodies and minds. In our personal histories, so much is ambiguous, secret and undisclosed. Just as fault lines are present but imperceptible until they shift, elements of societal unrest often reside undetected: issues such as class, race, and gender exist below the surface until revealed by some friction.
These disruptions mark the physical exterior even if we can’t see it. Often when these emerge they redefine our psychological and physiological identities. My paintings reference these topographies of the earth and body, and act as visual meditations on loss and trauma. My process is repetitive, I apply very thin layers of oil paint, pigment and wax, then repeatedly mark and sand each layer of the painting. This abrades and reveals a whole that is greater than its parts.. I build objects of history, and then excavate it so that it holds the memory of the process, including marks that are invisible to the eye.
My paintings examine the tension between what is visible and what is not. They support and reveal what we pretend is not there. My paintings reflect the ways that our landscape, our bodies, our histories are marked and shaped by what is hidden from us.
///source material in the studio///