Pathos Statement

These paintings aren’t permanent. The way they look is accidental—a process of continual discovery and evolution.  I will ruin them and repair them again, and I won’t grieve over what was lost in previous iterations.  This process seems to be what makes them alive to me. They can be destroyed more thoroughly than anytime I can remember, and they are re-born in a better form, scars and all. Their outward appearance is only a record of my sublimation. 

Even when I fear that I’m making them more ugly, eventually something new and beautiful arrests me. My intention turns, and I rebuild around what I’ve re-fallen in love with.  I attach myself to these moments the way a child clings to a precious object.  No matter how abused and how heavily needing repair the object, it is worth the investment in the eye of the one who clings to it. 

Eventually, I created categories and that made this project a schizophrenic one, so what was naturally one became many.  I was asking the question ‘what?’ over, and over, and over, and over… until I was lost in bucket of broken Russian nesting dolls.  Then, I started looking at how, over time, material is indifferent to traditions and traditions are indifferent to their materials.  And as I ran out of time to change them before I hung them, it seemed the less attention I paid to time the more I attended to ethos.