Can we truly experience joy, in all its fullness, if we do not also pay homage to the sorrows and depths of the human experience? The human condition includes a deep longing, sometimes for a past that forgets the sorrows of its time, and sometimes for a past that we wish were true. We try to fill the empty spaces that exist in our souls; I fill mine with imagery. Sometimes the imagery is abstract, containing an intangible brew of emotion, things that only colors and textures can convey. Sometimes the imagery is representative of a place, memory, or dream.
The works in this series are all oil paintings on mylar (sometimes on yupo), created with the intention of mimicking photographs to echo the essence of a memory or the emotional experience of a place. I have always been fascinated by the fragile beauty of film and slides, thin and transparent, like a tiny window. In some ways, film is a medium fading into obscurity, a result of rapid changes in technology and the ubiquitousness of digital media. The color and texture of film changes over time, much like the memories themselves. Picking both photographs and memories up, turning them over and over in our hands, creates well-worn grooves in the material and in the mind. Some portions are amplified, while others are lost. These mementos are pieces of comfort. They are the sadness and the beauty intertwined, a distilled moment of recollection. They are the heat of a day, the humidity of the air, and the stillness of a forest floor.
