after working on my own for roughly 5 years out of grad school, my work began to evolve in both materials use and visual languages. much of my work was inspired by texts – and thus, letters were a large aspect of my visual language. i was interested in how the letters could form readable words, but also to be able to exist in a less decipherable situation – i.e. as visual elements of abstraction… at the same time i was looking at a lot of visual communication material – maps, diagrams, instruction sheets, and other bits of graphic design. in both cases, the use of words and diagrams offered me to a way of building images through known language, yet subverting the meanings of those languages – a sort of emptying them out, and then putting them back together in different ways so that their original intentions were subverted enough so that a reader/viewer would be able to create their own meaning, rather than simply deciphering a puzzle. these paintings had no set conclusion or end point, and while there were clear references to language, the paintings stubbornly would not resolve clearly. most importantly i wanted the paintings to feel open ended, so that a viewer could create meaning by engaging with the parts, allowing the viewer to create their own conclusions or end points.
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paintings, 1996 – 1999
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anatomy of touch
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sanctuary (rorschach)
1997
39" x 48"
oil paint, wax, polyurethane
canvas, wood -
poem
1996
oil and beeswax
on canvas
48" x 24" -
amid this realm of fields…
1996
5' x 5'
oil on canvas
wood and
flattened aluminum cans
polyurethane