Video documentation of My Baggage, How I Hold It in process, San Francisco, CA, August 2015
Autobiographies
I simulated satisfaction:
weighting my feet to avoid unknowns, freezing my tracks to note the progress, eliminating risk to keep comfortable
until—I found, and was found painting: the unkempt process
that allows the mystery of “what next?” to captivate, more than rattle
With tubs of paint and pastels, rulers and tape, elastic cords and deflated tires, I coax personal experiences into form. After first sprawling words (sometimes full sentences, other times lists) across my notebook, I enter the process of translating those issues to a larger surface. The painting assemblages that result allude to conceptual paradoxes that I question daily, specifically those relating to faith, control, and self-actualization. I intertwine the action of reaching for answers with the condition of sagging beneath human imperfection and inability. Underlying all of my artwork is a search for spiritual, mental, and physical freedom amidst an acknowledgment of my own limitation and tactility.
This mark-made, self-formation is ironically paired with self-renunciation upon my works’ material completion. Though my artistic practice remains an extension of personal story, I contextualize my abstractions as vehicles for engagement, stepping beyond my own narrative. With the notion that every individual has a truth worth sharing, I pose art as an invitation, rather than an isolated entity. My aim is not that I would nail solidified statements to the wall, but that I would give glimpses into concepts, questions, and forces that viewers can consider long after the physical work.
my image remains
open, a sentence without a period
-TOT, August 2015