The sense
of foreboding tinged with playful fantasy characteristic of many of my
photographs is mimicked in a suite of complex figurative line drawings
on mylar. Androgynous figures of indeterminate age float on top of and
through each other in a layered composition separated by planes of Plexiglas
and semi-opaque mylar paper.
The ghostlike figures are caught in free-floating, awkward, transitional
states: sometimes their images are doubled; sometimes they seem like as
much animal as human.
Optically, the figures fade in and out of each other in a series of tentative
lines that read like traces of previous drawings and refer to memory and
transition. The figures' relationship to the water's horizon line seems
to shift within a single drawing. This horizontal reference point separates
air from water and reality from fantasy while it transforms the swimmers'
shapes and sizes. This shift mimics the play of light through water, seeming
to actually pass through the two worlds and to fracture the figure caught
between them.
These absurd predicaments strive to provoke conflicting emotions in the
viewer. Scenes which would normally appear threatening, dangerous, or
grotesque inspire empathy as well as fear, and ultimately are revealed
to be more complex than was first assumed.
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