A Breath of Fresh Air
These paintings, a continuation of the "contagion" series, were born out of social media zeitgeist and the coronavirus pandemic. The past few years have been plagued by feelings of suffocation, as evidenced by the omnipresent mantra "I can't breathe," spurred by the tragic murder of George Floyd. Meanwhile, people on and off ventilators gasped for air as Covid tightened its grip on the vulnerable and subjected all of us to continual media bombardment and an overwhelming abundance of information that's impossible to digest--millions of bits of data that demand our attention as we grapple with the physical reality of airborne viruses, and the unseen, sometimes technology-driven forces that shape our daily existences. As the pandemic ebbs, we still search frantically for truth amidst this digital fallout and crave a pause in the chaos, a reprieve from the constant onslaught of fear, uncertainty, and disease, both physical and mental. Now, as we emerge from this dark period, there's a glimmer of hope in the limitless, unpolluted skies that we can retreat to in moments of angst. These most recent works depict the process I went through as I transitioned from feelings of congestion to feelings of decongestion and visually saw the spaces in my paintings start to open up,creating a breath of fresh air.
As always, I am interested in the interplay of oppositess and the expression of diverse environments. I like visual enigmas and paradox. The surfaces of my paintings look like collage, but they are entirely painted. I like to allow for spontaneity in the choice of subject matter because by doing so, I am led to unexpected conclusions. Finally, I like presenting fragments of information that allow for the viewers to connect the dots, expand their vision, and reflect on how the parts relate to the whole.