MYLAR

Absence is my muse.
 
These works are visual dialogues between dichotomies: the past and present, the natural world and the constructed environment, between filled spaces and vacancy.
 
I began to make ink paintings on mylar in 1994, at first finding inspiration in the urban landscape––its disused and decrepit buildings, empty lots and factories, and the streets of New York City’s waterfront neighborhoods. While I continue to make works about the specific NYC cityscape, these explorations now include different urban and rural spaces in Massachusetts, Ireland and Italy.
 
Layering ink and wash, I paint on both sides of translucent mylar film. Touch is vital to my process. While the material is exquisitely responsive to manipulation and guidance, I don’t want to fully “tame” the ink, but rather allow it to run and puddle. I make room in my process for the ink to assert itself by embracing happenstance and strive to find an intuitive balance between my hand coaxing the ink into service, but also responding to its “aliveness.”
 
These works represent various states of balance and disequilibrium, spaces that are simultaneously devolving and evolving, eroding and re-constituting themselves. Process itself is a metaphor.
 
My hope is that this work ultimately reveals a truth about memory and time: by showing what is, I show what once was. And, what once was, is.