walkabout (talkabout)

I think of my paintings as glimpses through an imaginary microscope, revealing not only elements of the physical realm too small to see with the naked eye, but also energy fields and flows of information, flight paths of insects and satellites, and icons mined from the layers of knowledge and history and visual culture that make up much of our environment. Inspired by nature, and language, and the invisible connections between things, I create images that reflect my fascination with an increasingly complex world.

A recurring motif in this latest series is the familiar crosswalk symbol, sometimes walking in a circle with its head in the center. An urban mandala that for me brings to mind Australian Aboriginal paintings, and a visual pun: the title of the Nicolas Roeg film Walkabout, a story about the collision of cultures and the difficulty of communication. In Aboriginal society, “walkabout” refers to a period of wandering in the wilderness, a spiritual journey or rite of passage. But in 21st century America, we inhabit a different sort of wilderness, one that we ourselves are continually creating and infusing with meaning.

The artworks that comprise walkabout (talkabout) are populated with artifacts of my daily environment and accumulated memory, from the crosswalk figure to the Lincoln Monument, from cartoon balloons to the motifs on American currency. And as they do in dreams, the images and signs in these artworks have broken free of their moorings, have shed their original contexts. They drift and collide, their boundaries overlapping or dissolving into beautiful noise, and in the fragments and overlaps I find new sources of meaning.  Sometimes the things I discover fill me with a sense of wonder, and other times I find them disturbingly funny.

The Aboriginal journey is a solitary one, but ours is not. Even when alone, we are increasingly connected, commenting and discussing. We are watching and being watched. Broadcasting and receiving. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Stewart Brand’s famous question to Gregory Bateson, “What is the color of a chameleon on a mirror?”. Anecdotes suggest that it simply turns green or brown, possibly as much out of fright as an attempt to match its surroundings. But I’m more interested in the question as a metaphor, as a zen koan of sorts. Who are we when we look at the world and see our own reflection, which in turn is a reflection of the world? These new works are my attempts to answer that question.

forever almost falling

This ongoing body of work grows out of my fascination with the evolution of systems. I'm interested in the ways things are connected, both directly and through networks, and how simple elements can combine and evolve into complex organisms. Though the nature of these tends to be biological, there are parallels in social and information systems as well.

I see these latest linoleums as an extension of the work in the flatlands series, but with the area of focus zoomed in. While still topographical in nature, I think of them less and less as satellite views and more as things seen through an imaginary microscope. The title of the series comes from a phrase in Kevin Kelly's book Out of Control, where he describes the poised disequilibrium of living systems, forever almost falling as they ride the edge between chaos and order. Not only does his phrase beautifully describe the adaptive self-correcting process of evolution, it's also a pretty good description of the painting process itself.

flatlands

The works in my flatlands series are topographical abstractions, inspired by satellite photography and AAA roadmaps, microbiology and Australian Aboriginal paintings. I'm fascinated by the similarity in forms discovered when viewing our world from different vantage points, whether looking at the surface of the earth from above or peering at cells through a microscope. And I find maps to be every bit as compelling as the territories they represent; the roadmaps we use to plan our trips, diagrams of DNA, blackboards filled with strategies and explanations.

I work intuitively, starting with a seed idea and then improvising, exploring color and figure/ground relationships, scale and modularity. The square pieces are individually self-contained, but also function as parts of a larger implied grid, apparent when multiple units are viewed together. My materials are linoleum and vinyl, chosen for their tactile qualities, for their readymade textures, and because flooring material seems an appropriate metaphor for both the surface of the earth (which is itself becoming increasingly manmade) and the microscopic realm (our latest construction site).

Many of these images suggest multiple readings; one form could be seen as a lake or a microbe, another as a printed circuit or a housing development. Creating this work helps to remind me that we are not as separate from each other as we sometimes feel, and that we are part of a much larger system.