Artist Statement My paintings explore themes of time, dislocation and forming perceptions using references to architecture and archaeology. My background working on archaeological sites and building theatre sets informs an examination of what we make and destroy and how the contemporary landscape is defined by tangible material and, increasingly, by virtual space. The space in my paintings is a stage where illusions and structures are built, pulled apart, and reconfigured. In the work, I blend these analog and digital interpretations though translation from first hand experiences in the landscape, recreations on the computer, and reinterpretations back into the painting’s illusionary space and material.
I begin by exploring construction and demolition sites that I document with photographs. Walking these sites, I am aware of how these sources have a quality of existing between moments. A propped shipping skid, a stain of a staircase from an excavated façade, or a debris field all become potential gestures of structures to form images. Combining walking and collection is a means of using chance encounters with artifacts to define and disrupt compositional choices. This process exposes what would otherwise be unknown and recognizes unfamiliar relationships in the landscape as meaningful traces. Forming an understanding of a place requires deciphering a mixture of physical fragments and perspectives.
I use the computer to reconstruct and edit the original photographic evidence. I allow a variety of computer filters to pick and choose information in the photographs creating an edited and fragmentary digital image. The photo-collages present states of transition, dilapidation and rejuvenation, evident in the texture, physical structure, color, and light of this architecture. These images are projected and traced out, leaving an image that has the appearance of a digitally derived line drawing.
The paintings and wall drawings are built upon this foundation collage rendering. The process of painting is a means of translating and returning this original information back into a material world. Like repairing a façade, I use acrylic paints to reconstruct, edit and choose information from the original photographic evidence. In the process, photographic evidence is lost and the sensation of material is accentuated. I am interested in the conceptual and literal space between observation and dissolution, things in a state of dissolving and forming. This is a boundary area between abstraction and direct experience.