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"From Blue" Series The shapes in the paintings that form the series “From Blue” have been at the edges of my mind for a long time. As a graduate student in sculpture, I made similar shapes out of gauze, wire and wax. Though they are influenced by the structure of shells, chrysalises, webs, and jelly-fish, these iridescent shapes are invented amalgams. Their size is not firmly fixed in my mind; they could be tiny or enormous. Similarly, the blue in which they float could be air, water or cosmic space. Of two things I am certain, though: the shapes are caught in the ephemeral moment between appearing
Visually, these paintings were inspired by Byzantine icons, early Renaissance Italian art, and medieval maps. Conceptually, they were born of my fascination with humanity’s need to create a narrative that explains our presence in this unexplainable universe. “Who are we ? Where do we come from? Where are we going?” are questions that can never be fully answered, yet we fight to the death over our constructions. Human beings insist upon meaning, and the stories we’ve told ourselves are both dazzling and poignant. Having grown up in western culture and studied western art, I am most familiar with stories from the Christian tradition. Angels have been particularly interesting to me, both visually and conceptually, and this work was made with the idea of angels in the back of my mind. Beautiful, powerful messengers, they functioned as intermediaries between Heaven and Earth. Human beings with wings: what a lovely, odd idea. Gabriel, the Annunciating Angel, is the most often depicted, and I have always found the story of the Annunciation resonant. A story of matter being charged by spirit, it speaks beautifully of our desire to unify our dual nature, and of our longing to be visited by God. On a formal level, these paintings borrow their complete separation of figure and ground from traditional Byzantine icons. They derive their forms from abstractions of wings and from medieval navigational and celestial maps. Pre-modern maps are a little like Creation stories, in that they impose a structure on the unknown. What was not yet explored was simply imagined, for to not know was unacceptable. The diptich structure of this work obviously derives from the idea of two wings, but the inequality of the halves and the misalignment of the images allude to the continuing imperfection of our knowledge. We see things askew, our answers don’t add up, and our efforts to improve the world often makes things worse. And in these times, whose God is or isn’t talking to us? Human beings without wings: what a funny scary idea.
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