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 "Beyond Your Glittered Gaze", oil on canvas , 64" x 48", 2001 |
 "Onwards Through the Night", oil on canvas, 60" x 42", 2001 |
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 "Untitled," oil on canvas, 60" x 42", 2002 |
In all of the works in this two-pronged series, I use multiple vantage points to confront the viewer with a subjective surface that is not immediately accessible or easy to decipher. Color plays a crucial role in this process, as it is used both to identify and unite areas of the canvas and to disintegrate logical patterns of space. Distances are contracted and lengthened to include an array of information as the viewer travels through the canvas. By mapping a complex terrain, Navigations conveys a sense of the disorientation inherent in contemporary life. Variations of scale also create the sensation of shifts in time, giving my paintings histories, while destroying the notion of a linear chronology. The "present" of any one painting is the accumulation of experience of events. Some decisions are affirmed while others are filtered out, but every decision affects the painting in all of its moments. However, the attempt to understand something in all of its moments is an impossible task. Therefore, it is necessary for the viewer to create his or her own reading. In doing so, each viewer adds another temporal layer, bringing the painting closer to completion. In our culture, we are barraged by a boundless array of visual information and are continually asked to make snap decisions. In this environment, my work provides an experience that is not a quick read. Instead of feeding the viewer a ready "answer" in the manner of a formalist hierarchy, my paintings invite contemplation and require viewers to find their own paths. |
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| I
use painting to explore the subjectivity of experience by using
visual themes to require viewers to re-orient or locate themselves
in disorienting landscapes.
My paintings portray abstract landscapes caught in a state of flux. Continually changing their structure and meaning, these suggestive, semi-recognizable images seem to be the result of events both natural and man-made. My paintings reveal the unexpected and awkward juxtapositions created by this process, and record this experience throughout a period of time. The sources of imagery for many paintings in Navigations are Columbus' four voyages to the Americas. As in the more abstract landscapes, these works convey continually shifting environments which viewers must use their own vantage points to decipher. Like the viewer of a painting, Columbus relied on his own perspective, experiences, tools, and cosmology to define the world he explored. According to historian Valerie Flint's The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus, Columbus used processes of logical deductions, scientific measurements, educated guesses, and imaginative leaps to inform his observations about what he thought were East Asian islands and/or mythological continents. By exploring aspects of a familiar theme, Columbus' often criticized or romanticized vantage point, my paintings encourage viewers to examine their own "mapping" processes and to define contexts which shape our ideas, opinions, and even our ways of seeing. |
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