My new body of work, “ghosts in the sunlight”, borrows figures from a variety of painted mythological interpretations by old masters— Diana after the Hunt, The Rape of Europa, and The Allegory of Fertility, among others. The paintings fuse diverse time periods and media—Baroque, Rococo, textile design, gilding and, in some cases, playful laymen’s techniques like tie-dye and sun printing.
In these works old master’s subjects are isolated and reshuffled in the service of re-imagining familiar narratives. Rascals are removed, never to consummate their story’s intention; characters wander from painting to painting gathering in the moonlight or providing solace. In the portraits, peripheral figures are drawn out of the margins, their faces combed for private thoughts.
The gold-leaf abstractions are in a pattern lifted from a Candace Wheeler design. Candace Wheeler is thought of as the mother of interior design, she was one of the first women to collaborate with Tiffany, she created an all-woman design firm, Associated Artists, and fought hard for economic freedom for women in the early 1900s.
The gold leaf is seductive—it lures the eye, but when light hits it, it blinds. It is a physical way to mimic the experience of thinking you see one thing, but in fact, see another.
Fleshy forms unwind and whisper beneath seductive abstraction. Collapsed scrims mottle otherwise tranquil voyeuristic scenes of women.
What remains visible through the lattice of paint and shimmer are tender small gestures, soft spaces that celebrate a closeness among friends. These large-scale paintings evoke sweet, fragrant, interlaced spaces that knit abstraction and figuration into a psychological landscape where female figures can jostle around behind the scenes. These reveries flirt with historical allegory, but stop, as the relationship between the characters triumph, stripping away any sense of performance for an outsider. Tattered gold leaf licks at the women while they gingerly tell tales and share information. Clandestine in some cases, jovial in others, these characters’ hushed interchanges carry weight and power. Plucked from their original context, invisible histories are revealed, inserted or mired through the retelling. Subtle gestures are magnified; moments of being are highlighted.
