Pale green, then darkness, layer after layer, deeper than before, seabottom; the water seemed to have thickened, in it pinpricked lights flicked and darted, red and blue, yellow and white, and I saw they were fish, the chasm-dwellers, fins lined with phosphorescent sparks, teeth neon. It was wonderful that I was down so far...it was below me, drifting toward me from the furthest level where there was no life, a dark oval trailing limbs. It was blurred but it had eyes, they were open, it was something I knew about..
Margaret Atwood
In this series, Diary of Unknown Experiences (1997-1999), I painted one hundred and fifty small panels (5.5" x 7.5") that depict an imaginary world where the human and the animal merge. I made one painting a day for the duration of the exercise. The imagery in the diaristic paintings is a conflation of many living organisms or the remains of once-living organisms: bones, eggs, cocoons, nests. The features that characterize us as human are now lost among the disembodied gills, antennae, and pod forms that float in the murk. Reconfigurations of pure, identifiable forms lead the work into a more poetic sphere. I can imagine that these transformed entities would have to adapt to their new surroundings. Like these beings, the paintings never have to settle on being any one thing. They exist in hybrid states suggesting multiple representational possibilities.
It is interesting to think of biology in terms of uncertainty, confusion and irrationality. Images of dragonflies who, mesmerized by the glistening tar of the La Brea tar pits, dip their abdomens into the tar and get stuck, flash through my mind as I paint. The tar pits shimmer with their dead bodies. There are obvious associations to be made between the properties of paint and other natural materials: sap, blood, saliva, secretions of all kinds. The paintings smear and split open as I work, showing me their soft, liquid interiors. My desire for my work is to marry material presence--oil paint, tar, varnish and the effects of the embodied mind.
diary of unknown experiences
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
From the series, Diary of Unknown Experiences, 1997-1998, oil, tar, resin on panel, 5.5” x 7”
