My paintings are meditations on the passage of time and how memories are shaped. I have chosen photographic images as a subject, because of their power to be understood as truthful windows to past events—precise records of a specific time and place. In my paintings I enhance this photographic illusion. John Berger noted: “No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.” I’ve set out to show that no photograph can belong to the viewer in the way a painting does. My paintings impart an impression of “belonging” to their photographic subjects, but ultimately claim ownership for the viewer. I start with a cropped photographic image transcribed in paint onto a panel. With a fine brush or palette knife, I lay down strokes of paint across the prepared panel and then apply a paper-thin coat of clear acrylic medium across the entire surface of the work. Once this first layer dries, I apply another round of strokes, followed by another coat of clear acrylic. Over time, I build up these layers, constructing an image that is the sum of thousands of small strands of paint, suspended in a clear medium. The cumulative result is a highly wrought “skin” on the panel: a transparent physical manifestation of my labor with the image. This deepening surface creates a subtle and deliberate departure from the photographic source. The image continually blurs and refocuses, softening some details to faint implications, and losing others altogether. The subject reemerges as an echo of its photographic source—an ever-distant, evolving visual memory. |