A prevalent symptom within the body of contemporary culture is the implosion and endangerment of words; words delivered in a very intimate, personal way beyond current trends of expression limited to ‘140 characters or less.’ These paintings explore the remnants of a disappearing culture as a kind of anthropological pursuit.
These are living vessels containing subjects and relevant ephemera, in effect recreating their dying environment in a captive context. In this new series, recreated letters recovered from my older family members (mother, aunt, grandmother, etc.) in painted glimpses. Recalling a period where handwritten correspondence was not executed for special or serious occasions, but as the primary mode of interpersonal communication. A letter could be romantic, uncomfortable, permanent or threatening: its respective psychological impact was lengthy and the act of erasing that impact required physical force. The transfer of these carefully-crafted words into paint is an effort to re-instate the potency of handwriting in an environment where literature is morphed into the e-book and correspondence is (nearly) universally understood as e-mail. Simultaneously, I am reclaiming a part of my own history, displaying an array of artifacts, reliving the stroke and tracing my psychic geneaology.