2008
Living Fields is a series of black and white drawings/paintings that is intended to raise visual questions differently than when I paint in color. The contrast of black and white seems to simplify the depth but in turn, it complicates it by insisting that the viewer's brain makes sense of the undulating patterns that are difficult to nail down. The grid, which is constructed from reassembled squares, offers no help other than to make reference to vertical and horizontal lines. Those lines attract us as a familiar reference to figure(vertical) and landscape(horizontal). From there you can decide what it is you are seeing.
Hint: Try squinting, or defocusing your eyes for a few seconds while looking at the painting. Then, look at it normally again and I'll bet you'll see things differently.
My paintings in color behave similarly to the black and whites, simply they add yet another dimension and/or an alternate type of depth. Our brains tend to stitch images together in hopes of finding something recognizable; perhaps something comfortable. One of my goals is to induce just the opposite!
