Statement
1.
I paint geometric abstractions. Using various painting materials, oils, spray paint, acrylic, and resin, as well as materials traditionally associated with craft such as cloth, yarn, foam, thread, I am constructing an experience that is physical and ultimately bodily. Paintings are sculptural but function most precisely when they are restricted by the format of stretchers. They begin with stitching into canvas, cutting, building up/distorting the surface. By employing typically feminine techniques such as knitting and crocheting before I apply oil paint to canvas, I challenge the accepted notions of ornamentation and domesticity.
2.
My paintings are small and compact like bombs.
They feel touched and built over time. They have a handled, sullied quality, I see them as ethnic bodies, as immigrants, as those in Diaspora, as “the Other”.
I am interested in a limited palette, in the need to have the viewer spent time with the work. These paintings are demanding and needy. They undress slowly.
3.
I choose the medium of painting to evoke meaning when dealing with the immediacy of current events or processing through layers of history because painting is capable of memorializing, sorting, and re-presenting as well as distancing to make objective. Surfaces range from distasteful, destroyed and decrepit to challenging and difficult beauty. Though there is a constant awareness that the viewer is coming into contact with surface, color, and composition, formal choices are extensions of paintings’ content.
I paint geometric abstractions. Using various painting materials, oils, spray paint, acrylic, and resin, as well as materials traditionally associated with craft such as cloth, yarn, foam, thread, I am constructing an experience that is physical and ultimately bodily. Paintings are sculptural but function most precisely when they are restricted by the format of stretchers. They begin with stitching into canvas, cutting, building up/distorting the surface. By employing typically feminine techniques such as knitting and crocheting before I apply oil paint to canvas, I challenge the accepted notions of ornamentation and domesticity.
2.
My paintings are small and compact like bombs.
They feel touched and built over time. They have a handled, sullied quality, I see them as ethnic bodies, as immigrants, as those in Diaspora, as “the Other”.
I am interested in a limited palette, in the need to have the viewer spent time with the work. These paintings are demanding and needy. They undress slowly.
3.
I choose the medium of painting to evoke meaning when dealing with the immediacy of current events or processing through layers of history because painting is capable of memorializing, sorting, and re-presenting as well as distancing to make objective. Surfaces range from distasteful, destroyed and decrepit to challenging and difficult beauty. Though there is a constant awareness that the viewer is coming into contact with surface, color, and composition, formal choices are extensions of paintings’ content.
