Framing Perception
Gallery4Culture, Seattle, WA, 2015
Framing Perception is a mixed media installation including paintings and video inspired by a 2014 residency in Portugal. This exhibition synthesizes my experience through multiple layers of perception and media, exposing my process of image-making and constructing a personal narrative.
My paintings have spilled-out into stage sets; video is now painting; and the paintings themselves are documentary footage.
In Framing Perception I am exploring how our perception defines our experience. As an image-maker I am in the role of witnessing and recording my life, and through that process I am selecting elements from my daily experience to include in my ongoing narrative. For me, being an artist is a conscious and spiritual commitment to writing my own life-story.
My pastoral imagery connects me to historical painters such as Poussin and Cezanne. Unlike the former, and more like the latter, I am not engaging with nostalgia for a paradise lost. Rather, I am filtering beauty through a current, raw lense. My images are direct and from my experience, whether it be plein-air painting, synthesizing information in the studio, or video footage of me interacting in my environment. I am choosing what to look at and what to imbue with meaning. A stick on the beach is a magic wand. A frieze of figures around a plate is an oracle. My backyard is paradise.
