KALEIDOSCOPE – New Paintings

Statement on the New Paintings

In the spring of 2020, the pandemic arrived. Physically isolated, we were shifted to virtual communication with the world. As we began to channel our way through the digital screen in isolation every day, the gridded layout felt most authentic. In my painting, I looked for reliable underpinning structures and craved feelings of reciprocity in the physical and laborious paint application. On the rigid linear mesh, I am mapping my marks which are reminders of my hand movement and their touch on the surface.

In 2018 I discovered my bilateral dysplasia, a gradual deterioration of the hip joints. It has been gradually worsening since then and is maintained with periodic steroid injections. Walking, a most essential activity once taken for granted, has become a conscious effort. Now I desperately strive to hold onto a sense of balance while I am on my feet. In the past two years, while the joints and muscle connection on both sides have been slowly disintegrating, I have become aware this ailment has influenced my perceptual focus and orientation as well. My mark-making has been, more and more, initiated over the structure of the grid as if it were a pair of crutches I put my weight on in search of stability.

Within the symmetrical composition, segmented triangular shapes circulate as pivotal elements. I became more conscious of close looking during the pandemic; the pictorial experience is a series of recurring events that are most familiar, but never identical, like the metamorphosis seen out of the infinite possibilities in the kaleidoscope.

My recent paintings are more playful and joyful as they unfurl the prismatic spectacle and reflect the pursuit of wonder, curiosity, and marvel within the pictorial confines. Painting is increasingly a redemptive process, as I gather paint marks to recover a new perceptual balance, as I compensate for the loss of my physical balance. I am in the process of discovering the endless play of forms and colors and the feeling of exuberance.