My practice depicts the history of the observed alphabet, and the implications of its invention through drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography. Our brains are not hardwired to read or write, yet somehow this phenomenon evolved into a universal expectation similar to speech and motor skills. My work encodes the invisible effects of dyslexia through text based tangents relating to spell check, mass produced measurements, body relative directions, instruction manuals, computer passwords, glass plate astronomical data, and the language of tennis. As literacy continues as a currency of modern time, I grapple with my own didactic tendencies and question what it means to hold the privilege to consciously choose illegibility.
Through an amalgamation of published imagery and everyday office supplies, I engage with found objects as a tangible study of the writing process. My collection serves as a modular dictionary in which distinct definitions are exchanged for familiar forms. As an artist I am also an editor: I add, subtract, and rearrange visual components until they formally and pragmatically converge as one. Whether assembled laterally on shelves or vertically in pegboard, these working documents consider the neurological interplay between objects and words and objects as words. This offbeat internal dialogue materializes into concrete expression through a physical vocabulary of punctuation, disrupting the surface tension of text with an undercurrent of comedic timing. These overlapping mechanical moves articulately suspend a string of non sequiturs, while inscribing personal anecdotes that are simultaneously disconcerting and amusing, revealing and perplexing.
Rendered to scale with crisp lines and fields of regulation color, my paintings suggest segments of tennis courts and book pages with intersecting qualities of geometric abstraction and action painting. I interrupt these compartmentalized shapes in relation to movement and (mis)translation, by imprinting sneaker soles and other game-related gear into the wet grounds. This responsive approach intuitively records the presence of manufactured mark-making to lift away and deposit new layers of color across a surface impacted by oil paint. Influenced by a perverse index of pressure, punctuation, and penetration, this interest in impressions span the many applications of the word, including the performative nature of impersonation found in the mimicry of trompe-l'œil.
Symbolic of the fundamental actions of walking and reading, I use the deceptively simple sequence . . . left . . . right . . . left . . . right . . . as a recurring motif for the overlapping presence of tracking in sports and literacy. These paintings serve as a visual record of the parts-to-whole paradox of labored learning, and the cumulative efforts that are inherently erased at the threshold of success. As my terminable body contends with the constructed wor(l)d, I examine the imposed acquisition of language, while unpacking the philosophical tensions between athletics and academia. Despite their inert properties, these paintings are active opponents in the studio; relating the nagging endurance of failure and grief to playing a game of tennis with a stone in my shoe.
Pricing and exhibition inquiries available upon request.