Odes and Offerings
Graphite on Paper
50" x 38.5"
 
Merging original and classical imagery, my drawings home in on notions surrounding faith. Fantastical figures such as angels, mythical charmers, sparring animals, and saturated flowers are rendered in colored pencils and graphite. Subjects are placed center stage, acting as make shift monuments for present-day rituals or ceremonies. We look toward monuments and altars as odes or offerings to something we hold sacred. Here, they are frozen in deadpan limbo as suspicious homages to institutional systems of time and meaning. Hypnotic orbs, rainbows, landscapes, and positive and negative shapes reoccur as supportive images, pushing the drawings deeper into oscillation between trust and skepticism. Conflicting ideals bleed into one another as divisions of categories begin to slip. My drawings invite the viewer to meditate on bright but disquieting scenes laced with a sense of dreamy uneasiness.
 
The draftsmanship of my drawings shift between laborious detailing and cartoon flatness, to mimicking an object’s real world materiality. Some subjects are assigned unexpected surfaces. For instance, multiple layers of colored pencils and graphite are used to give skin the appearance of television static, a Victorian coat the consistency of bubble gum, and wood the quality of a warm patina. Large sections throughout the drawings are “left blank.” This allows shapes to double as negative space while opening up areas for paper to absorb dings, graphite smears, and stains. These become an integral part of the final outcome, providing a first person account that pushes against the representational aspects of the work. All of these interplays disturb volume and warp stillness while allowing form and content to poetically mingle. It is these kinds of combinations that allow me to share the weary yet hopeful, meditative space I fall into while making them.