Artist Statement
Through my personal quest to find answers, I have faced a certain amount of discrimination for my unorthodox belief system, consulting divination with tarot cards and astrology charts. For millions of people the search for knowledge is quenched by organized religion. Fusing Christian narrative with New Age theology, I am questioning the nature of those beliefs; established religion verses counterculture practices, faith verses spirituality, dogma verses self-expression. Falling back on my Roman Catholic upbringing, my work often utilizes Christian lore as a means of critiquing organized religion, often exacerbating the absurd at the same time admitting the absurdity in my own beliefs.
Decorative patterns of doilies frequently appear in my work. Many times they take the form of an aura that surrounds a living being mimicking the intricate embellishments seen in Medieval religious paintings. An aura is the energy that encompasses us all, the size and color particular to the individual. Throughout art history, Jesus and the Virgin Mary are depicted with a golden aura, known within the Christian community as a “halo”, the holiest of all auras. By emphasizing the aura and divorcing ourselves from the specifics of religion, it is important to note on a molecular level we are all made of energy.
By employing a variety of painting techniques, I engage in the battle between free will and destiny by channeling different energies from the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious realms. Many of my paintings begin by being worked on the floor, allowing paint to drip, wander, and absorb. As this is happening, I am also wandering in a meditative state, creating a spiritual ritual born out of the act of painting. The iconography imposed on these abstract backdrops often deal with devotion, memory, gender obligations, body image, mental instability, life and death. The images are formulated as hypothesis that invites the viewer to think, to laugh, and/or feel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)