Rapunzel | 2003 | charcoal on paper with rack | 90″ x 42″ x 24” (144″ x 42” extended)
My past paintings and drawings are invested in absence; their content depends largely upon what is not immediately present. Composed solely of elements pertinent to the narrative, the images are devoid of much of the surroundings that nature would have us expect. The people, animals and objects, removed from their conventional settings, appear on barren grounds or in turbulent climates. Displaced from their ordinary surroundings, the subjects take on new roles within the narrative. Their isolation solicits our attention, and they behave according to the omissions.
What are the circumstances of the missing? What possibilities surround the absence? How does the vacancy inform what presides? The elimination of conventional associations asks us to draw new conclusions, and consider alternate outcomes to commonplace events. As we look deep into the empty spaces we brush up against what surrounds them, and become alerted to the meaning that absence suggests.
