“Mankind owns four things that are no good at sea.
Rudder, anchor, oars, and the fear of going down.” - Antonio Machado, Spanish poet
WHY
This new body of work, "Debris Fields" was triggered by the tsunami in Japan, March 2011. Growing up in earthquake-prone California, with real fears and not just rumors of “tidal waves”, when the tsunami hit first Thailand and Sri Lanka in 2005 and then Japan in 2011, I sensed a scratchy pecking at an idea and a wrestling with what it is I’m pulled towards in my painting; the tangible and ragged evidence of decay death and disaster. A tangling of bodies and grief and mess and colour and texture and in that place also an intensified awareness of life and beauty and richness that is inexplicable, compelling and desperate. As Machado says, go down....all the things that keep you afloat may keep you dry, but they also feed your dread.
I’m interested in the unanswerables – the ambiguities and odd spaces that might make the hairs on my neck stand up, but also serve to awaken. Television and social media show continuous “extreme weather” conditions and remind us daily of our part in the unraveling of the world and yet this momentum of growth and decay is and always has been; we are all faithful witnesses, inheritors and contributors. It’s not the end of the world we’re worried about. It’s the end of civilization, to put a finer point on it, the end of humanity. What would that look like?
