T.M.I. or With Breath or Shadow Person

A handful of large oil paintings, a few sculptures, and a magazine, all explore the experience of being a body and an animal on the Earth. Through a wide range of imagery–a doctor's visit, a dramatic waterfall, a shadowy figure resting on a couch, a girl and her cat watching TV, and a tree at night–I use the body as a source of information to reveal the human fantasy while at the same time creating a new framework to live within–one that shows the human experience in the greater context of the natural world. My work explores the experience of time and being a body relating to disability, what it is to be a human animal, art making as tool use, aesthetics and care as resistance, and nature as the appropriate context for chronically ill people (and maybe everyone’s) experiences. I am interested in undoing hierarchical values assigned to species and in looking to nature, not as a metaphor, but as a place to find commonality among the living beings of this planet. By allowing myself to move between a range of styles within the paintings, I show respect for a number of things: the physical, the pleasure of looking and of making, and the importance of questioning aesthetics as an essential part of resistance and survival. Imagery in paintings comes from experiences I've had that have given me a certain kind of awareness of my body–a new perception and relationship involving care and maintenance, physical feeling, and a mental picture of who and what I am. I invite viewers to rest, read, and unlearn that we are separate from nature; I invite viewers to witness a journey through the kingdom of the sick.