Each painting in my recent Through the Veil series begins with a rendering from a closely observed fabric with wrinkles and folds. They recapitulate the compositional structure of a painting/drawing by artists from the past and present. The fabric in these paintings acts as a limen or threshold that places the viewer into multiple, often conflicting, layers of space and meaning. The in-between spaces or shifting between spaces shares schematic similarities with diagrams of the spaces in string theory, membrane theory, and black holes: the viewer does not simply stand in front of the painting, but in viewing conceptually inhabits different levels of space with respect to the painting. In the series the Rabbit or landscape/environment may be stretched or manipulated through Photoshop to create a sense of instability, heightened emotion, or a digital sifting. The paintings good-humoredly deconstruct imagery from pop, outsider, and high culture to create new “spaces” of meaning. The shape-shifting Rabbit is positioned in front of or behind; it looks into, out, around or between images and spaces. The paintings are filled with a quirky and often dark humor, visual puns, symbols and metaphors, moments of silence, art historical allusions, cultural collisions, and spiritual conundrums while they play with style and pictorial/formal construction.
