When I first started to paint and feel around for subject matter, rooms were always something that came to mind since they are often in my dreams. I noticed, going over the ‘wall’ sketches, ones that I had done several years ago, were the beginnings of another series called bleedthrough (past). This is a group of paintings about memory, where imaginary objects in large, expansive spaces are in a process of dissolving or decaying with layers of wax being scraped away to get a worn, used effect.
Here are the very first ideas of ‘walls’.
“wall III”
“wall I”
“wall II”
This one above, being the cross over idea of a factory setting with a ship sitting outside the window, led to the sketch below, an actual mill building, in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
The idea of a dress form was important for this story. I wanted a room of labor with the machine to the left, in foreground, attached to the dress form, a robotic, objective element. Desks in a row are production lined up and the white sheet that hangs from the machine is illustrated with a body laying down and small figures around it, giving it life. The sense of escape or release is the ship, waiting patiently outside, a steady way to transcend into another world.
“bleedthroughit” 1999
channeling the abstract 