Currently, my practice deals with issues of environmental disaster and how this disaster reveals itself visually. I am interested in the “invisible” – the destruction we cannot see immediately. My research involves the investigation of NASA aerial photographs of ice shelves in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The opportunity to think at an unprecedented scale exists by way of these global imaging systems.
When looking at these images, it is clear that climate change visually manifests itself in an abstract manner and I can extract a paintable language. My process contains a back and forth between painting horizontally on the ground and vertically on the wall and I continue to build a vocabulary of color through experiments with oil paint, bleach and paper. Time is an imperative element in the work as the chemistry is active and chemical reaction and material transformations are exciting. The organic versus the industrial is at the root of the use of oil paint and bleach. Additionally, the bleach as a pure agent – and how it acts as a material – parallels melting ice. Appearance, disappearance, evaporation, erasure, absence, presence, invisibility. The bleach relates to and is in opposition to both land and water.
The work is a response to disaster and simultaneously is disastrous – a parallel to the present human condition. For me, painting is embodied thinking. The paintings are not answers, but formal forums for questioning and research.
When looking at these images, it is clear that climate change visually manifests itself in an abstract manner and I can extract a paintable language. My process contains a back and forth between painting horizontally on the ground and vertically on the wall and I continue to build a vocabulary of color through experiments with oil paint, bleach and paper. Time is an imperative element in the work as the chemistry is active and chemical reaction and material transformations are exciting. The organic versus the industrial is at the root of the use of oil paint and bleach. Additionally, the bleach as a pure agent – and how it acts as a material – parallels melting ice. Appearance, disappearance, evaporation, erasure, absence, presence, invisibility. The bleach relates to and is in opposition to both land and water.
The work is a response to disaster and simultaneously is disastrous – a parallel to the present human condition. For me, painting is embodied thinking. The paintings are not answers, but formal forums for questioning and research.