I have included many birds and assorted painted vessel forms in the tableaus that I have built for the past 3-4 years. I expanded that to include the use of different animals as well as the human figure in order to grow my ability to talk artistically about our complex human life.
The idea of vessels and containment has been very important to me. The physical human form is the embodiment of the spirit or essence of an individual and this signifies the essential element of life. Ceramic vessels are curious human invention created to solve simple or mystical problems. I have create many vessel forms and painted images on them that establish a dramatic space that is both real and surreal and of course I hope that the story I try to tell breaths a similar force of life into my work. The narratives I build come from ideas between the real and imaginary worlds which I purposefully intertwine. My work creates an intersection for both natural and cultural objects, which I am equally interested in making. I am inspired by still life paintings in particular from Europe and through this process find symbols and create narratives that run parallel to human experience with these stand-ins. I am at the same time fascinated and gratified that when I work with clay I can paint, draw and sculpt in many different ways In the same work.
I make decision on what forms to make instinctively. The birdcage, bird nest, terrarium, perfume jar and lab glass jar are vessels in real life that are curiously made out of a material that one can see through, wire or glass, so one simultaneously sees the outside form and inside space. I am intrigued by this and I create outside/inside surrealistic dramas with multiple point perspectives with painted images and real forms in space related to the shape and usage of a particular vessel.
I have been working for almost six months now on a new body of work that will take the form of an installation. It is the next body of work that I intend to exhibit. I am in the process of creating a hundred empathetic portrait paintings on porcelain which are set into porcelain picture frames. These portraits are inspired by historical images in painting and photography of the extremely happy and joyous and the very sad or horrified expressions. These portraits will be displayed on a wall, salon style, all facing the viewer. In front of the portrait wall will be a long narrow table and placed about on the length of the table will be a variety of porcelain candles. While all are candles, each will have been burned and melted down to a different height and suggestive of the body in it's melted wax gesture. Each of the portraits then will be simultaneously looking back at the viewer while also looking at the melting and melted candles. At the heart of this project is the idea that although all of us are human, we can experience the very same incident with the widest variety of reaction….the mystery of being human in a complex world.