MAGNITUDES (FOR ELLEN)
-Mixed media: Acrylic, linen, graphite, gunpowder and blood on canvas-
40”x40”
My friend Ellen was dying of cancer. So I made her this. A benefit to defray her medical costs. A palimpsest with gunpowder and fading text expressing our years of misadventures and absurdity. A fire for her life. Her danger and passion.
The disease claimed her eventually but this remains along with memory.
“A palimpsest is work that fades to make room for something new - Stories pass into memory to offer space for fresh adventures. Fire consumes so that beauty springs forth from ashes… and health vanquishes disease in a forced erasure to give way for renewed life.
Created with multiple layers of various gunpowders, each having their own unique qualities, they were ignited on the canvas itself in numerous stages in a process that can only be guided by the artist but never controlled. Gunpowder as a medium speaks with its own voice always and leaves its traces where it alone chooses. The process then shifted to one of contrasting delicateness. Prose nearly obfuscated by paint, is rendered barely discernible throughout the work and requiring its audience into an intimate physical closeness in which to discern the words themselves. And what can be perceived from the fragmentation of the text is a dream-like narrative that evokes a journey - a community and a history of which his friend has been inextricably a part of for many years. In doing so, the work evokes our own universal longing to be part of larger narrative that we write with our lives, or hope to.
MAGNITUDES (FOR ELLEN)
-Mixed media: Acrylic, linen, graphite, gunpowder and blood on canvas-
40”x40”
My friend Ellen was dying of cancer. So I made her this. A benefit to defray her medical costs. A palimpsest with gunpowder and fading text expressing our years of misadventures and absurdity. A fire for her life. Her danger and passion.
The disease claimed her eventually but this remains along with memory.
“A palimpsest is work that fades to make room for something new - Stories pass into memory to offer space for fresh adventures. Fire consumes so that beauty springs forth from ashes… and health vanquishes disease in a forced erasure to give way for renewed life.
Created with multiple layers of various gunpowders, each having their own unique qualities, they were ignited on the canvas itself in numerous stages in a process that can only be guided by the artist but never controlled. Gunpowder as a medium speaks with its own voice always and leaves its traces where it alone chooses. The process then shifted to one of contrasting delicateness. Prose nearly obfuscated by paint, is rendered barely discernible throughout the work and requiring its audience into an intimate physical closeness in which to discern the words themselves. And what can be perceived from the fragmentation of the text is a dream-like narrative that evokes a journey - a community and a history of which his friend has been inextricably a part of for many years. In doing so, the work evokes our own universal longing to be part of larger narrative that we write with our lives, or hope to.