Psychic Wilderness
In part of my new series, text merges with the landscape to address systems that aim at informing and controlling human behavior through means such as propaganda, sloganeering and self-help phrases. While many of the source materials display a range of landscapes, the blending with text develops into a kind of psychic landscape in our minds; a space where we absorb, digest and internalize the daily bombardment of words and images. As with certain types of advertising, the actual ‘product’ is not revealed at first, but relies upon the patience and desires of the viewer to engage with it. The results are highly complex and layered collages that take their time to reveal all its parts. In our attention economy, I am to create an experience that rewards slow looking.
My collages inhabit a space between abstraction and figuration, anthropology and storytelling, cultural and personal myths: where belief mingles with magical thinking. Utilizing landscape and portrait as a point of departure, I consider it a type of visual anchor allowing me to pursue themes pervasive throughout my images: psychological, psychedelic, erotic undertones; trafficking in esoteric and occult symbols; the illusion of impossible situations. Simultaneous narratives are a desired result.
I approach collage from an intuitive process, attempting to create images like visual hallucinations, a kind of delirium, all the while pursuing that intimate space between viewer and image, It is important that the viewer knows the work is by hand. Contemporary magazines are my source material and are considered ‘anthropological document’ excavating necessary parts to breathe new life into such materials. I employ drawing, appropriation, and frottage which involves sanding - a gesture of revealing what’s beneath.