2010, Conte and oil pastel on paper, 23"w x 35"h (each)
In my art practice I often visualize fragments of an unmade object before materializing it physically in form. A color, texture or shape will appear repeatedly in my visual thoughts. The fragmented images are not accompanied with language or conceptual clarity. During and after the creative process I write poems as a means to “trace” my decision making process. The poems function as a “net” of words that the colors, shapes and textures are inscribed with as cultural objects.
Although I do not depict images within my work, the viewer’s perceptual instinct will prompt them to seek out an image within the unknown form. I am less interested in what the viewer will mentally fabricate than I am in the viewer having a grounded physical engagement. It is my goal to sensitize the viewer to the physical reality of objects, to delay our habitual tendency that intellectualizes the phenomenal and ineffable as familiar and nameable. Without contextualizing the present within the past, what then would we understand of our selves, our bodies, and our environments? To what degree can we perceive the present without referencing the past?
A Daimler Company
