| Artist Statement Addressing the subtleties of relationships is my primary focus. I am interested not only in the relationships between individuals, but also the relationships between one’s sense of self and one’s body, between one’s “bodied” self and the society in which one lives. Gestures and juxtapositions become clues in discovering the complex realities of human nature. Lately, I've been focusing on how memory fits into and affects these relationships. There is a reconstruction of ourselves, our identities, that takes place with regard to memory. What part does fact play in our memories and this process of “re-membering?” If I had documented the facts of an event, as I saw and understood them at the time, would they be a more accurate depiction of the truth than the one my memory currently holds, or will hold in another 20 years? How can what happened be in a constant state of flux, and how does that flux affect our identity, and how we see and relate to ourselves in the present day? In many of my paintings, the overlap of images gives them an ethereal quality that speaks to this flux, the non-tangible, dreamlike quality of memory. But the images have become tangible and permanent in the oil on canvas, thus creating a new relationship. In my most recent work, I have begun to examine more specifically issues of sex and gender. The work is generating conversations about Jung’s theory of creativity involving the animus and anima (male and female) halves of the soul, and the Greek mythological figure, Hermaphrodite, as well as discussions about the ideal person, Man before The Fall, and the concept of The Innocent. This exploration began as an extremely personal investigation, but the work that has transpired is fashioning a discourse that has grown far beyond the seed of my initial experience. It is an affirmation that the truly personal is always universal. |
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