The viewer’s gaze does not rest, but is drawn closer. From a densely packed visual field, forms emerge, cohere, rupture, dissolve and, finally, submerge again. Rapidly scanning the tangle of visual information, the viewer is drawn closer still, and the process repeats.
My images arise from a hybrid drawing/painting process in which I first build a layered ground of loosely painted brushwork, and then use mapping-nib pens and acrylic inks to superimpose a network of intricate mark-making. Like a form of tattooing, the ink redefines what lies below: some brush strokes are grouped and become part of larger, fragmented figures; others brush strokes are outlined and decorated but retain their original shape, caricatures of the underlying gesture. Still others are transformed into areas of pattern: boxes, rows of simple strokes, interwoven lattices.
The result is a richly seductive topography, but is not my only objective. I’m interested in treating mark-making as a form of data, a metaphor for the cultural information transmitted via both traditional craft labour and contemporary electronic visual culture. I’m also interested in the ways in which visual space is continuously shifted and reconstructed through the process of looking. I strive to create a sense of interiority in my compositions, arising from an all-over density of visual information that halts only at the physical edges of the supports (wood panels).
This intimate, interior space is both created by and provides a playing field for a distinct visual vocabulary. Neither entirely abstract nor representational, these forms suggest multiple referents without resorting to direct depiction. Connotations abound, from the biological (cellular forms, micro-organisms, spreads of infections, veins, intestinal coils) to the digital (pixellation, matrices, binary bits, information storage media) to the field of textiles or handicraft in general (weaving, embroidery, doilies, tattooing, decorative practices, writing, brush strokes).
I treat my images as a space for visual thinking whereby I arrange and employ this visual vocabulary as a way of modeling thoughts about fragmentation, structure, incompleteness, hand labour, data aggregation, and image construction.
A r t i s t S t a t e m e n t
My work is born of a dual interest in traditional craft textile practices and contemporary electronic media. I am particularly interested in the effects on information when it is converted from one medium to another—both the gains and losses of translation—as well as the inherent instability of recorded information.
I create my images by hand rather than digitally, opting for an organic, personal and labour-intensive method of construction rather than a computerized and rigid process. I treat mark-making as a form of data recording, a metaphor for the cultural information transmitted via both traditional craft labour and contemporary electronic visual practices. My materials are acrylic paint and acrylic ink, applied with a variety of tools including fine-tipped dip pens.
My images depict a tension between data accumulation and degradation. Densely patterned and fragmented disc-like forms occur throughout, suggesting organization and storage of data as well as its possible corruption. While calling to mind CD or DVD storage media, these disc images are many things simultaneously: reminiscent of handcrafted doilies or mandalas, suggestive of biological and cellular forms, divided and arrayed like pixellated digital images. This simultaneity is also a movement, a transition from analogue to digital, a breakdown from whole to part, a refusal to exist in a single state.
While my work shares the labour-intensity of many traditional crafts, it is distanced from them through the act of representation: knitting, stitching, weaving and embroidery have been translated into the languages of painting and drawing. At the same time, the work refuses to be read as straight painting: paint strokes outlined in ink have become caricatures of gesture, fractured picture elements. Similarly, while the pixel mosaics and glitches of electronic imagery are evoked throughout, the work’s connection to digital processes is by metaphor alone. Just as one’s gaze is denied a place to rest within these densely packed images, the elements of these compositions similarly refuse to sit still. These are pictures in flux, caught in the moments of transition.
-May 2010
