I am interested in the idea of travel, of our attraction to the unknown, the fragmentary, the imperfect, and the incomplete. The known turns into the unknown through the remains of physical, tangible forms in historical artifacts and ruins, which exist but remain incomplete. We flock to ruins of past ages to consider our identity in relation to time. There are roots and routes that can be drawn, documenting both our line of travel from place to place, but also our line from present to past existence. These lines move in patterns as we rise up and out of the landscape and back down again to become one with it. It is as though we are leaping ever towards some unknown, a progressive distancing from origin. This distancing is a fantasy realm of invented spaces that have only partial basis in the real.

We create our own reality by going to a different place. We may travel to an actual place, but our eyes and minds build this place into a fantasy realm as we imagine the fragmented histories that we see. We also travel virtually through the connection of the internet. An alternative identity may be taken on, an avatar turning us into “foreign bodies” which can morph in various ways as we move connect to sites. Through travel, we become a hybrid of ourselves and part of an artificial or imagined reality that we feel connected to. The ruin becomes a metaphor for this hybrid reality. It is real, but fragmented, open to interpretation of what it “might have been.”

This concept of a hybrid reality can be seen throughout my work in painting and drawing through a complex layering of space. Patterns are printed in an underlying rhythm of color and transparency. The reality of the ruin is digitally morphed and transposed onto the surface to form a suggested space. The fragments of this reality are built upon through various methods to transform an imagined world. The result is a view of invented histories, of fantastically completed fragments showing the connections and disconnections with a past that is not truly known. … Read More