Skin forms the threshold that separates our insides from our outsides. We are not only permeable objects, our very boundaries are unclear. We breathe in the wind, absorb the sun, digest other animals and plants, and it all becomes part of us… just as we lose water, shed skin, and leave waste. What "we" are is in constant flux. From a higher perspective, we are simply a fingerprint of the ocean, the toe of a mountain, a fingernail of the sun.
My current series of paintings is a meditation on the themes of permeability and individuation. Through a focus on the human body I explore how one thing becomes another, how identity fluctuates in time.
In Wisconsin, life is dominated by the expansive forests that connect everything and the water that saturates our landscape. Our consciousness is filled with lush growth, overpowering gardens, alien weeds, muddy fingernails, titanic humidity, midnight paddles, devouring mosquitoes. We are not seekers in the desert or conquerors of mountains. We do not partake in the magnificent black and white tragedies of the city. Rather, we live within the blue and green mysteries of the earth. As such, we understand the mysteries of the skin.
