FAMILY TREE 1996-98
FAMILY TREE 1996-98
Oil and acrylic on four birch panels; 80 x 119 inches
A 1997 residency in Poznan, Poland turned my work toward landscape. Rows of Polish trees with their random spheres of mistletoe became backdrops for invented genealogies. Such irregular rhythms in an agrarian geometry extended my exploration of visual metaphors for order undone.
Mistletoe’s romantic reputation is complicated by its parasitic nature and medicinal value. Its berries are like pinkish pearls. Though born of irritation in the shell, pearls also have romantic allure. Mistletoe drains the life from its host, but prompts the lover’s kiss. The berries in Swoon are suspended in an idealized state and cast down, before and after the “fall”, the surrender, the loss of innocence. Swoon embraces this complication with an aleatory genealogical table that departs from a rational and patriarchal order of bloodlines. This impossible structure acts as an armature for the cascading drapery of Flemish painting, the surrender of grief and desire made incarnate. The eyes of the romantic and the realist are crossed in this painting.
Detail
Oil and acrylic on two panels, 80 x 64 total
The family trees in Familiar Secrets and Fly in the Eye: the Genealogy of Ecstasy are of biblical proportions, beginning from Adam and Eve and the progeny of Noah. Their representation of human origins is macrocosmic, multi-generational and projects a generic authority. In invoking the body, flesh and blood, I have attempted to transform, expand and (perhaps) deflate these sources, to fuse the more macrocosmic and impersonal with the microcosmic and personal, to allude to the moment as well as to eternity, to decentralize and to infuse with desire. Shimmering haloes float with tongue tendrils, petri dishes, microscopic specimens, dividing cells, and bloodstains. Veils of the boudoir hang with those of the altar and stage. The sterility of the X-ray contrasts with the fecundity of the cornucopia. Globes unmoored from their orbits are framed among blind spots and black holes.
Piero Camporesi's Incorruptible Flesh enhanced my consideration of the world and the body, the world body, the body as world. His accounts of spiritual ecstasy numbing the body to external stimuli inspired Fly in the Eye; a Genealogy of Ecstasy. In rapture, one would not blink, even if disturbed by a fly. Such coincidences of the banal and miraculous embody the extremes of our experience, the measured and immeasurable.
Detail
Oil and acrylic on four panels, 80 x 136 inches total
The family trees in Familiar Secrets and Fly in the Eye: the Genealogy of Ecstasy are of biblical proportions, beginning from Adam and Eve and the progeny of Noah. Their representation of human origins is macrocosmic, multi-generational and projects a generic authority. In invoking the body, flesh and blood, I have attempted to transform, expand and (perhaps) deflate these sources, to fuse the more macrocosmic and impersonal with the microcosmic and personal, to allude to the moment as well as to eternity, to decentralize and to infuse with desire. Shimmering haloes float with tongue tendrils, petri dishes, microscopic specimens, dividing cells, and bloodstains. Veils of the boudoir hang with those of the altar and stage. The sterility of the X-ray contrasts with the fecundity of the cornucopia. Globes unmoored from their orbits are framed among blind spots and black holes.
Detail
Oil and acrylic on wood panel, 47.5 x 47.75 inches
Oil and acrylic on birch panel, 24 x 24 inches