On Large Paintings and Ancient Future Body-Writing
I imagine a lot of my paintings as mythical tapestries
originating from somewhere lower than my mind
a place connected to a larger, older mind
like my body helps me connect to the past, to all-time,
through the present.
it’s almost like feeling the imminence of fairytales
that are both old and forgotten and also haven’t been born yet
vibrating at the intersection of past/present/future
criss-crossing in a renewing spiral up my spine.
In my twenties I worked as a Mandarin translator, and for several years lived in Beijing,
where I was exposed to Chinese calligraphy and ancient Chinese philosophical texts
I am drawn to the physical intentionality present in hand-written script:
the intrinsic emotional force of writing and mark-making,
separate from whatever informational or rational content it holds
I sometimes hide poems or personal prayers in my works,
mixed with invented handwriting.
because i like how handwriting involves the body, mind, spirit, and heart in the process of a transformation
I am interested in how the energetic body expresses itself through writing
and how writing, as a physio-energetic act, meets and makes the future
I am inspired by ancient cave paintings and mark-making
and by the notion that we might manifest new dimensions by drawing what doesn’t exist in this one
or writing in scripts and speaking in languages that we don’t think we understand
I use mixed media on unstretched, often unprimed and asymmetrical canvases, and I don’t plan ahead
it is like going out on the beach in search of gold in the sand
my feeling is that if I just let out whatever is on the flow/whatever to my rational mind feels totally nonsensical
i am unearthing a lost language, or inventing new language from the debris of dead ones
this sounds grandiose but i mean it in actually a very simple way