Incubated Beauty
My work is a continuous scientific experiment. I am working with heat, chemicals, and paper and cloth reactions of which I am not always certain. When I like the quality of a material I consider how I could incorporate that object’s beauty or impermanence with wax or paint. In Flight I was fascinated by the organic quality of street salt and its reactions to paint over time. Would the salt be able to break through the canvas, hold up over time, crystalize, or create new growth in the paint compound? Drawing from life gives me a sense of satisfaction but there is a second degree of challenge that I get when I work with wax and heat. My drawings become temporal and dependent on the reaction of the wax. The drawings themselves are not precious and with one misstep can be altered beyond recognition if I use too much heat. I strive to achieve a perfect juxtaposition in my work. There is a balance between encasing my work in a security blanket of wax and subtly moving charcoal and ink by heat to exaggerate a line with more gesture. Delicate rice paper can be reinforced by wax and sculpted to form landscapes reminiscent of silk, glass, and bark. Materials just like words hold connotations in our collective psyche. I hope that these textures incite a memory amongst my viewers.