Me and My Ghosts
I am conjuring spirit characters that embody the notion of multigenerational trauma and the ghostly qualities of mental health issues we unwittingly inherit from our ancestors. Right before my eyes, family ghosts reach through the work with a writhing hand jive that shakes my ancient family tree from crown to root, where Confederates and Nazis have nested. My spirits recall the Hungry Ghosts of ancient Buddhist lore, who wander a parallel world, afflicted with insatiable desire, hunger, or thirst. After years of filing my ghosts away, I am now coaxing them out of my body during working seances, looking at these spirits for what they are, and listening to their murmurs about my own hungry, clinging hands. My outward practice of self-portraiture is merging with my latent ancestral characters to find lessons in my family "inheritance." While using my work to confront personal ghosts, I have been haunted by the parallels between family systems and the false narratives of colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, where my history dances with our history.
I am conjuring spirit characters that embody the notion of multigenerational trauma and the ghostly qualities of mental health issues we unwittingly inherit from our ancestors. Right before my eyes, family ghosts reach through the work with a writhing hand jive that shakes my ancient family tree from crown to root, where Confederates and Nazis have nested. My spirits recall the Hungry Ghosts of ancient Buddhist lore, who wander a parallel world, afflicted with insatiable desire, hunger, or thirst. After years of filing my ghosts away, I am now coaxing them out of my body during working seances, looking at these spirits for what they are, and listening to their murmurs about my own hungry, clinging hands. My outward practice of self-portraiture is merging with my latent ancestral characters to find lessons in my family "inheritance." While using my work to confront personal ghosts, I have been haunted by the parallels between family systems and the false narratives of colonialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy, where my history dances with our history.
Portraits, 1984-Present
I have come to use realism as a practice of radical acceptance. People are a "ready-made" subject matter, everyday vessels of the magical, in-the-flesh palimpsests layered with multitudes of stories. Making portraits forces me to ask myself what exactly makes a person a person, and to study the subtleties that dissolve the unjustified generalities imposed upon groups of people. For several thousand years portraiture has brought the dead back to life and heightened the living. Across the millennia, we lock eyes with the regal gaze of a noblewoman from an Egyptian sarcophagus and wonder what her days were like. Ludwig Meidner’s foreboding self-portrait "My Night Visage" enables us to feel Europe’s psychic earthquake on the eve of The Great War. Rembrandt's lifetime of self-portraiture treats us to the unflinching scrutiny of a human face as it absorbs the unpredictable passage of time. As long as the work stays intact, it hands us our ticket to immortality, whispering across time, “Look at me, this is the way I was.”
The Year of the Virus: Selected Drawings, 2020
My sketchbook has kept me alive during the pandemic. I have turned to the mirror to check in with myself and used photos to have imaginary portrait sessions with missed friends, distant heroes, and even the monsters who are riding all the rotten chickens coming home to roost.
My sketchbook has kept me alive during the pandemic. I have turned to the mirror to check in with myself and used photos to have imaginary portrait sessions with missed friends, distant heroes, and even the monsters who are riding all the rotten chickens coming home to roost.
