“Answers don’t always exist, sometimes we wander in the dark without purpose because our feet compel us to do so. Life is a series of questions without answers and it is the musing that sustains us. The wondering brings us to the center of things where it is warm, where it is light. It is about the journey.”
Pastel and acrylic on paper mounted to cradled panel. 50 x 37.5 in
“I shivered. The world was ominously orange, and then red, and then green. Light glowed from lamps or from car headlights. From deep within the park something stirred. I shook, I trembled, I leaned against a fence and looked both ways, looked outside of myself and then at myself. I had wandered far and had no idea where I was, where I had been, where I was going.”
Acrylic and pastel on paper mounted to cradled panel, 30 x 40 in.
“My bones didn’t feel right, there was a tic deep inside me almost as if they itched. My skin was trembling. I leaked sweat that crystalized as soon as it oozed from my pores. My left thigh was spasming. The world bucked and swirled around me. Focus on breathing, I told myself. The breaths rattled my chest, but the forced rhythm calmed my racing heart. In the tree bed California Poppies were growing.”
Acrylic on paper mounted to cradled panel, 36 x 48 in.
“I’ve wandered these streets before, they are well known to me. From a time when sinister designs propelled me through the dark. With a hungry fire in my belly, itching in my bones, an empty, gaping cavity in my being I sauntered towards oblivion.”
Acrylic on collaged paper, 22 x 30 in.
“I remember staring at the solemn mist and imagining myself dissolving into minuscule water droplets floating on the dust, or joining the moss, slowly but surely breaking down until I was nothing but soft patches of green. I remember even then this need to erase myself. To become smaller and smaller, to inhabit space and time less, to become a whisper.”
Acrylic and pastel on paper mounted to cradled panel, 16 x 20 in.
“A stranger appeared under lamplight in the distance. A silhouette and a shadow, blackness slowly advancing. The sight of him triggered something in me. I became acutely aware of myself in that moment, of where I was and what I looked like, walking alone in the dark, stumbling and panting. No1.”
Acrylic on paper, 18 x 24 in.
“A stranger appeared under lamplight in the distance. A silhouette and a shadow, blackness slowly advancing. The sight of him triggered something in me. I became acutely aware of myself in that moment, of where I was and what I looked like, walking alone in the dark, stumbling and panting. No2.”
Acrylic on paper, 18 x 24 in.
“Still the filth clings to me, a film of oil from swimming through polluted waters, but now I am on the other shore. Each stone of the path I tread, once the stomping grounds of demons, now an arena for the barrage of questions that stream forth ceaselessly. Why am I here? Why have these things happened to me? Why have I happened to the world? What is wrong and why can’t I be right?“
Acrylic on paper. 48 x 120 inches
“I could stop then. I could stare, and the stranger might stop, the stranger might beckon to a dark part of the path, into the shrubs and bushes we might go together until it was safely secluded. And I might enjoy the pressing of a stranger’s skin on my skin, the ruthless caress of a stranger, the wanting and needing and taking of a stranger. I might enjoy it.”
Acrylic and pastel on paper mounted to cradled panel. 24 x 30 inches.
“As I walk home I find love in the falling rain. In the fresh bite of an incoming autumn. I find peace in the lights of cars speeding down Eastern Parkway, shadows of lamp posts swinging wildly, puddles shining reflected traffic signals. I walk the streets and I feel things as though each moment were the only experience I’ve ever had. Wonder and excitement, fear and confusion. I embrace these things, welcome them in, hold them for a while, with care, with thoughtfulness, and then release them.“
Acrylic on paper, 18 x 24 inches.
“I have had many identities and not a single one of them has made sense to me.”
Acrylic and pastel on collaged paper, 24 x 24 inches.