Absence and presence are entangled, each infiltrating the other. Chronic disease and disability create a flickering state of being. I want to use this state, like John Keat's concept of Negative Capability, to dwell fully within uncertainty. The fluidity between absence and presence or figure and ground in my paintings causes their readability to shift. The figures meld in and out of the background, in and out of each other, reflecting their instability and ambiguity.

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The mechanisms of illness represent something miniature growing--taking space, and yet existing on a scale much smaller than its effects. Our bodies function through small repetitive processes we do not have to pay attention to unless they make themselves known to us. What does it mean to make the miniature giant, to make the giant miniature, to allow the miniature to remain?

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Figurines, dolls, and toys are objects on which meaning and narrative can be placed. My figurines hover between motion and stillness; they feel moveable but not necessarily mobile. Animation of the inanimate questions formation, the process of something coming into being, and the ability for something to be altered or tainted before it’s fully formed. My objects/figurines waver between their dime store cheapness and the sentimental attachment and meaning that can be projected onto them.

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Using themes of athletics and exercise, I explore how motion and stillness disrupt and transcend our perception of time, how athletes need to care for their bodies, mimicking the relationship sick people have to theirs, and the role observation and stillness have in watching sports. The way we use our bodies in daily life, the way our bodies allow or disallow themselves to be used, alters our experience of time and motion as well as possibility and limitation. Like the figurines, my athletes combine fragility and strength, and their bodies perform for and fail them in myriad ways.

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Within all my paintings, ambiguity and fragility are situated within the figures and the world surrounding them. The body is a container that is unpredictably permeated from without and within. My figures exist like a nosebleed or tears; they are fluid emissions telegraphing vulnerability and resilience as they push their way into an uncertain world, exiting their bodies and pushing into and out of their environment in ways they shouldn’t.

 

A fragile existence is subject to change; all could fall apart at any moment or maybe is already in a state ofdeterioration. Consequently, a sense of anticipation and ghostly imbetweenness envelops my paintings. While not yet entirely dissolved, the figures appear to dissipate, and their present and future waver.