Transformational Painting

This gallery presents earlier works under the approach of Transformational Painting. These paintings are done in the spirit of reflection, creating understanding and reframing the stories that we all live by personally and also those of the collective. They involve a conscious reconfiguring of the personal mythologies to understand connections beyond time and culture, and yet are very bound by cultural norms.

Abstract
“Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he can not see with his eyes.”- Arshile Gorkey. These paintings on canvas, beyond any others, take seeing to an underlying truth, and, with time, to a reality that is more pertinent than perceptions of the so-called realistic.

Figures:

Figures are intimate to who we are as people–they resonate relationship. There are no figures that don’t signify relationship-to each other, to the environment, to the unknown or to the viewer. They are our touchstone of belonging.

Archetypal Figures
These figures stand dominant in our psyches and in our culture universally depicting constellations of the stories we play out.

Figures with Spirits
All these figures are connected in some way to the other realms. In Japanese folklore the fox is the shapeshifting trickster. Animals are used all over the world for connection to power, healing and what is so intimate yet other.

Figures from Bird’s Eye
Changing the perspective of how we usually see figures shifts the context slightly for added nuance. The added sheet of paper to the surface of the painting is a screen, camera, x-ray, or computer, adding dialogue on another level of relationship between the figures and shadows.

Tango Paperdolls
Argentine Street Tango is expressed in different ways in each series. Board games suggest games with play between the genders. In the Paper Doll Series tango identifies an attitude of mind, body and spirit that is cultivated through the music and body with partners in time. The pre-war paperdoll Dolly Dingles speaks to the innocent bystander, like a child with no way to understand the complexities of adults and for the non-dancer unable to really see the dance without the body memory.

Boardgame Tango
Tango is a complex endeavor that leaves its mark on you if you have spent any concentrated time doing it. Tweaking the context of tango through board games and paper dolls reveals unconsidered aspects of society and self.

Animals

Animals have been a place-marker in our psyche since we were children, as pets and as stories that stretch our imagination. In our urban lives as adults we still dream of animals. Some of these animals are in the act of becoming human, while others are humans slipping into animals.

Animals as Conduits
These animals divine, shape shift, guard and inspire.

Animals we Know
The animals in these paintings step forward to mirror the sameness and otherness of our projections.