Artist's Statement: Body to Body

My work rests in the space between response to site and response to material. The elements explored in my work are therefore two-fold: How can the sensory experience of a site be transmuted into the sensory language of a painting? How do the material conditions of the painting—in the sparest sense, consisting of paint and surface—inform the nature of this transmutation?

Last year, I discussed the difference between perception of physical reality and perception of painterly reality. I wrote: While moving in the land, the body negotiates space through the senses, through sight and touch. A painting, on the other hand, operates within a reality that follows its own internally consistent rules. Since last spring, I have directly engaged with this concept of painterly reality through the use of mark-making gesture, the application and examination of paint in differing forms and conditions, and the increasingly specific and relevant choice of surface material.

Gesture is one of the key ways in which I mediate between site and painting. I begin work by visiting a site. I spend time there, and develop a relationship to that place, body to body. When I face a painting, I use gestures that mirror my actions at the site.

The physical condition of the paint and the manner in which it is added or erased from the surface has the power to both clarify and confuse a painting’s reading, often at the same time. I combine the practice of mark-making gesture discussed above with different paint processes in order to form each painting’s composition. Recently, I have begun working with a variety of surfaces, including birch panel, paint-grip metal sheeting, and polished stainless steel sheeting. The revelations, intrusions and reflections of these substrates into the painted surface serve to disrupt my own assumptions, such as the preeminence of image over object within a painting. Instead, I use the elements of gesture, paint condition, and surface to weave connections between site and painting, between the foot’s path and the more ambiguous sensorial path within the work.