My Process
As a painter/photographer, I find that my painting and photographic series often parallel each other. My abstract photographs aspire to the complexity of painting.
In my photography, I no longer work in the darkroom as I was trained, but employ several in-camera and digital techniques, including multiple exposure, scanning, digital editing, and light manipulation. I also set up elaborate installations before the camera and layer and re-photograph images through a series of projections. The photographic format can maintain a simple one-to-one relationship or it can consist of large horizontal scrolls or grids in which each piece is independent yet part of a larger conceptual whole.
In my painting, I work primarily in oils and mixed media, seeking to transform and discover. Layering liberates my practice on multiple levels. It provides practical constraints and conceptual models for revealing subconscious conversations without any single specific narrative.
My background in both miniature and large-format painting (architectural oil paintings and encaustics over 18 feet) assures that my interests exist beyond scale, medium, juxtaposition, or any specific visual means. Discovering and inventing gives me an authentic sensation of bewilderment even as it assures engagement in the process. I consider myself both a pictorial and a conceptual artist, as well as an artist-activist.
I work in series, most recently the sequence including “Imperfect Geometry,” “Human Nature,” “Rabbit Holes,” “After Me” and “Cross -- Overs” which will ultimately consist of 195 paintings dealing with different global regions and geographical borders. It is a kind of puzzle, an interpretation of separate lives and at the same time the commonality of human experience manifested at the intersection of stories by various immigrants and refugees. In particular, “Cross – Overs” looks at those who crossed over and those who remained in exile or became victims of their journeys, succumbing to or conquering them. These borders are tragic yet beautiful; crossovers are real or fantastical. The paintings are a response to my own story as well as to sentiments I have felt as a result of reading testimonies, viewing documentaries, or even reading the literature and poetry of a particular country or region. The “Cross -- Over” grids make up a fragmented world puzzle and yet they are conceptually connected. “Cross -- Overs” is an expression of hope, beyond geographical boundaries, on an individual level and on that of our species, that we might regard these cross-overs as ways of bridging our differences.
