New Work

Current Pieces

I go about my day completing the mundane tasks required by adulthood, and something familiar piques my senses. A smell, a song I haven't heard in a while, a too-far-wandering thought. All at once I am forcefully pulled into dreamlike state -- and an instantaneous shockwave of melancholic nostalgia ripples through me. Moments of being a precocious and lonely child, a self-conscious and naive adolescent, a brief moment that passes as quickly as it came.

On some level, I want to stay there. It's not just about the lack of adult responsibilities or the lost innocence of childhood that are appealing to retreat to. The state of society is undeniably crumbling before us while we, the working class majority, must suffer the consequences of our leader without much choice but to grin and bear it. Maintaining a sense of urgency, a desire to participate in the shift and change that is required is a struggle for most, when most of our energy must be sold against our will just to survive.  

I don't think it is surprising that so many people maintain their sanity with escapism. For many it is video games, books, various forms of media -- particularly of the 'social' variety. I am not above this, of course, and usually indulge myself as well. But it is more effective, in my case, to expel my pent up longing through my artwork. Rather than escaping, repressing, and avoiding these hauntings, I confront them, and harness them, to share in the collective desperation for a time when things were easier. 

It is easier to remember distracted wanderings of the mind which occur throughout the day, but imagery from my slumber finds it way to the surface more often than it used to. The interiors of family homes and their inhabitants come up often - as do empty malls and shopping centers, playgrounds and jungle-gyms, parking lots and highways, and the half-realized architecture of places I may or may not have been before. I think about so-called liminal spaces a lot - backrooms, dreamscapes, familiar places with an unsettling undertone. Places that are in-between everywhere and nowhere. All representative of an all-too-common feeling - the restless yearning for the way things used to be. At least we have access to the internet nowadays, so I know I am not alone in this. 

In the pieces below, I am just beginning to explore these themes. My family members are still present, but I am trying to transition the focus to myself directly. The characters continue to make appearances, and the source material still includes family photographs, but as the project progresses, this will change. Breaking away from my reality as such and exploring what is hidden in in the parallel plane, when my thoughts wistfully wander towards my childhood in daydreams and slumber, is the goal here. I don't know if I will find any answers in the literal sense, but maybe, hopefully, I will make something out if it that is worth looking at.