GUT FEELINGS

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This work deals with the dynamic between states of power and helplessness. 

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Being somewhat nomadic by nature, I am often on foreign ground and at the mercy of my hosts. Having lived in Cuba, Ghana, Costa Rica, and Japan, I am familiar with the experience of being a minority in a mostly homogenous culture. I have been fundamentally struck illiterate and mute by language barriers, isolated, treated as a curiosity, bullied and pitied. The intense frustration created by these personal limitations surfaces in my art in the form of images of physical bondage, torture and amputation.  My characters are often helpless to their surroundings, and it is ambiguous as to whether they are victims of fate, or masters of their own undoing. The line between masochism and sadomasochism is blurred, leaving only the raw experience of ecstatic torment.

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I am particularly interested in combinations of the traditional and the contemporary.  This is reflected both in my choice of art materials, which run the gambit from traditional hand-ground Japanese pigments and Italian fresco to paper-mâché varnish and glitter glue.  While juxtaposing high art and low art materials, conflicting images of gore and delicacy, pain and comfort, control and relinquishment, my ultimate goal is to create something that is alluring and beautiful.

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