The Archeology of Vulnerability

I. Collage on arches hot press paper, coffee, watercolor, gouache, mulberry paper, walnut ink, hibiscus ink, avocado ink
47” x 65”

II.Coffee, watercolor, gouache, oil paint, on arches hot press paper
47” x 65”

Archeology is defined as the description and study of objects, monuments, works of art, etc from the ancient past or the collective artifacts, burials, structures, and other material remains of a particular people, locality, period recovered through the excavation of archaeological remains. Vulnerability is about being completely open and defenseless, and through these conditions, there is a certain strength and flexibility. In the context of archeology, I was thinking about underneath, underground, and hidden as kinds of imagery. I wanted the web of mangroves to be the support and container for these things. I am not able to define what the hidden messages are in the paintings, but I relate it to the feeling of knowing that you have emotional walls up but not being able to access the memories, reflections, or feelings. I keep on coming back to thinking of these paintings as a material process of finding and burying images, symbols, and memories that I am unconscious of, but when the works are finished I am able to grasp them tangibly. I am really interested in images that feel like artifacts, and the question of what defines something to be an artifact or an object of archeology. Conceptually, I believe that it is interesting to make sculptures into artifacts, to deceive that it is a copy. Can this created thing hold all that a “historical object can” what are the qualities that give a relic a soul? Can anything become a relic? How am I, in these works, in conversation with making objects of intimacy, these paintings feel very tender and personal to me even though I didn’t directly cite my portrait in them? The fused spaces and bodies create psychological paintings that feel like cerebral landscape paintings. I like the idea of thinking as these paintings separate from the concrete photographs and sculptures I draw from, how they can have their own air. I am drawn to the unpredictability of pouring water with mixes of pigment and brewed coffee over the paper. For the paintings, the pours are necessary because it relaxes the intense curl of the paper so I can paint on it. I think that the push and pull of loss of control to control and gravity to anti-gravity is compelling aesthetically. Instead of depicting water or the ground, I am trying to create a psychological space that feels like these things. I wanted these paintings to feel like peripheral views, a mirage of images rhyming together to make a narrative space. The figures in these paintings have a dirty earthen feel and I was interested when making these paintings in how the figures could pull in and out of the background if they were their own pour paint.