30 x 40 x 2 in., oil on wood panel.
This project was born out of processing my dad’s diagnosis of Benson’s Syndrome (also, Posterior Cortical Atrophy or “visual Alzheimer’s”), a rare degenerative disease. I realized that his experience inflected a shared experience of disruption in visually interesting ways. Living with family this last year, I was presented with the visual-spatial challenges experienced day-to-day. These paintings are my imagination of his spatial perplexity, where depth, color, light, and reflective surfaces transmit bizarrely. The brushwork and composition are meant to produce a sense of overwhelm. From scenes of airport terminals to kitchens, my work looks to nexuses of interaction, be they among strangers in society or family members within a home. These spaces of connection mirror the aim of my paintings: facilitating for viewers an empathetic translocation into the mind space of another. Airports in particular are liminal zones, their between-ness of place servicing potential segue for between-ness of people. They may also evoke shared transitional qualities ever-present in our lives, and inherent in memory and mortality.
“It is passage, not primarily spatial, that passes itself off as passage and confronts the imaginary.” -Edouard Glissant in “Poetics of Relation”
16 x 20 x 3/4 in., oil on wood panel.
View of (dis)placed at Emerging Illinois Artists exhibit at McLean County Arts Center, Bloomington, Illinois.
View of (dis)junction at Emerging Illinois Artists exhibit at McLean County Arts Center, Bloomington, Illinois.