(photo, tempera, acrylic, aluminum; 2025)

“Knowing letters and gestures hover across an innocent accumulation of darkness

Cut Away the Bad: Black Parts: I removed elements from newsprint images from the mid 20th century that felt corrupted. I combine these scraps of dark spaces represented within or around the periphery of cataclysmic and traumatic scenes, sourced from old newsprint journals. By retaining and reconstituting the empty shadows into a single body of darkness, I hoped to cast a kind of spell, evoke an army of neutral space, a ritual accumulation of a peaceful parts of places drawn from the overlooked, anonymous or unnoticed aspects that exist even in the most bankrupt of places and times. From that dark and neutral sea, creativity might re-emerge.

I photographed the collage, printed it at a large scale, and mounted the photo on aluminum. The brutal “newness” of these materials invigorated ancience with new life. I painted a motif I heard in a dream during my mid 20s in reverse on the surface of the photo in layers of color. Offset by the cruelty of the statement, I again sought to erode and obscure my message, find a path through it through tactile and experiential processes, clawing at and smearing the trail of revelations.”

Dimensions H 39 7/8 X W 49 7/8 in.