My most recent paintings, the Baltimore Ruins series, describes my infatuation with the crumbling but beautiful buildings of Baltimore City, and how these deteriorating structures can act as a metaphor for the human psyche.
Baltimore, a richly historic city, is riddled with abandoned buildings. Certain parts of town indeed feel post apocalyptic. I have always been fascinated by crumbling, ruinous structures—the deterioration of once beautiful things. The juxtaposition of the original buildings, usually geometric, planned and orderly, invaded by the visceral tears, gaping holes, and insidious cracks, have a profound visual and psychological weight. My first painting of ruins was inspired by a trip to an island off the coast of Nagasaki, Japan. Here I saw Gukanjima Island, a small island that once functioned as a city but was completely abandoned and left to the ravages of nature.
When I started this series, I was most interested in capturing the buildings themselves, and leaving their occupants out of it. In my most recent paintings, however, I have re-introduced humans, as well as a stronger narrative element to the work. In paintings such as Baltimore Ruins VII (Gaga, Angel of Death) I have depicted a long stretch of a building which includes the now defunct “Bottom’s”, an old night club. Lying on the ground, in front of the building, is a homeless man sleeping. To the right is a street memorial, erected by the friends of someone slain on that street. Inspired by Lady Gaga’s eccentric costumes, I have made her the Angel of Death, ominously floating above the sleeping homeless man. Baltimore Ruins VIII (Coiffures) is an exploration of the hallucinations and delusional thinking of a drug addict and prostitute as she stands in front of an abandoned coiffure shop. It is worth mentioning that I used to live in a neighborhood where I saw these kinds of scenes frequently.
Baltimore Ruins X; The Joy of Life (after Matisse) and the Inevitability of Death, the most recent painting, is a variation on Matisse’s epic painting, The Joy of Life. I have combined the structure of his painting with the idea of a Vanitas painting. Vanitas paintings, most popular in 16th and 17th Century Northern Europe, describe the fleeting nature of all earthly pursuits and possessions while contrasting them to the inevitability of death. The whole scene is fittingly set in an area of Baltimore about to be razed by bulldozers.
In summary, I consider my paintings to ride the line between Social and Magical Realism. In the next year I expect an increasing narrative to evolve in the work. I am interested in re-purposing these abandoned buildings to create new spaces, conducive to a variety of drama and contemporary myth.