Exhibited at "Taint Modern, a Critique Group Exhibition," January 2012, at Three Ring Circus Arts and Education Center, The Big Top, 1638 Clio St., NOLA 70130

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I’ve maintained an interest in painting and drawing people and places. Often my work attempts to establish a sense of space and place, whether imaginary or real, and to tell a story. From that starting point, I entwine other ideas in the subject matter and try to make them accessible to the viewer through humor, scale, sensual application of paint, conscious application of medium, attractive color, and quirky characterizationsof figures.

In the Driver Series, I attempted to ground myself in image-making, finding a sense of place in familiar but unexamined surroundings. The subjects were quick, usually blurry images I took with my phone camera from the car as I drove to and from work over the year. The drawings are handcrafted reproductions of
those images.

The degree of representation and process play on aspects of photography and drawing, but more importantly, address the issues of maintaining a studio practice amidst other professional responsibilities. The palette references traditional photography and newer digital technology, but it is created with traditional drawing media: graphite, watercolor, pencil, and ink. Scale references the miniscule phone screen, but also symbolizes the finite times I am able to grab my materials and draw, moments squeezed in
among other responsibilities and activities. Their sketchiness suggests the speed of the image-taking, but I intend both scale and minute detail to convey the intimacy and obsession I feel with my studio practice despite the little time I give it. In a linear configuration, they reference stills in a filmstrip, frozen moments that aren’t often given direct attention.

I carried the drawings around with me over the year, protected among the leaves of books that I keep in my bag just in case I’ll read them. Still, they’ve gotten a little worn and beaten in the process, and sometimes I accidentally drenched them in spilled wine. I chose to display them without glass, raw and vulnerable to touch and the elements, but again protected by gallery protocol. Exposed like this, they have a tactile substance and accessibility, which is what I want from my work in general.