Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Solo Exhibition at Latham Watkins!



Inner Landscapes and Flower Portraits: Sept. through December 2008
on view at Latham Watkins lawfirm.
The show consists of 43 works: 23 framed works on paper and 20 works on canvas, drawings, paintings and collages. All work is for sale.

Artist Statement for the Exhibition:

When I began my journey as an artist at age 19, drawing was my first love,
my salvation, a meditation. Through drawing I came to painting, first using
paper as my surface, then moving to canvas. The Flower Paintings series is
an exploration--of oil paint and the enjoyment and constant challenges of
that medium, and of portraiture, and the relationship between portraits and time, images of impermanence. The flowers posed for me in all phases of life from freshly cut to dried up and dead.

The Inner Landscapes are self-portraits, landscapes of my psyche, and a
return to what inspired me about drawing. These inner landscape drawings and paintings/collages have gone through three phases, and continue to evolve. The more I work on them, the more I find revealed about the effects of the city of New York on my self, my psyche, my identity. Layering these “cities” of my
imagination, building and painting and drawing on top of old discarded
images, pieces of text--all of this reflects my relationship with my native
city, including, most recently, the effect of living a few blocks from the
World Trade center until 9/11/01 and returning to live there again as this
American ruin goes through its many phases towards rebuilding. Metaphorically, the narrative of my inner life is intertwined with the life of the city of New York as I have known it. I came upon my inner landscapes through a process of exploring line, shape and color and I am constantly surprised by what forms from my process. The meaning of drawing for me is to travel in uncharted territories and
continue, sometimes doubling back and adding to old memories, like an old
temple ruin, where new grass and flowers grow through and among broken
pieces of a building.

(A note on dating works: As I worked on the Inner Landscape series, stopping and starting pieces, using old pieces on top of new ones, writing the date each time I went back to a piece became a kind of ritual and integrally connected to the themes I work with. As I do not usually title my works, the dates become a part of the “Untitled”, a further way of categorizing and describing my process.)

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