I began drawing objects from life during the pandemic. When most of life was experienced through screens. When this work began, I remember how alive I felt engaging with objects in this way, arranging, lighting and confronting them with paper, pens and pencils. Over time, my additive way of drawing and working with mixed media became repetitious and therapeutic in a way that reminded me of dribbling or shooting a ball, running and other activities I have known to bring me to states of flow. I created 32 drawer drawings in my sketchbook in the course of one year.

The drawer became my frame, and the implication of looking into a bedside drawer became more exciting to me. Studying objects and marking the page was my way of grafting my some of my associations with people and lived experiences onto the page. As time went on, I became more interested in the elusive quality of the objects themselves, and even those with no personal association at all, started to become part of the play.

ALTARS

During this year of self-assignment, I was getting more interested in working from life, and also in the potential to explore the borders and boundaries of what I was making. I watched the movie Blood Simple for the first time. I was struck by the noir quality of the film, and particularly by a scene depicting an open highway, two men and a shovel. That weekend, I placed a large veil on top of my kitchen counter, and a black garden shovel nearly the size of me on top of it. From there, Eulogy was born and later marked as the first in my series of Altar pieces.

I started using veils, flowers, scarves, and articles of clothing to construct my compositions, this time, the frames less templated and more organic. At this time, I had the boundary of the drawing to work with, staying within the confines of a piece of paper, or at times, creeping off the edges of a cradled panel. Making these, I’m thinking about patterns and boundaries within relationships – the potential we have to nurture good relationships, how toxic patterns weave many relationships and the significance of mourning those who are still living, but who may need to be left behind. The use of ink felt very straightforward, sharp, and controlled; the perfect metaphor for certainty in boundary-setting, an area of life that can at times can feel fuzzy and unclear.