Fugitive Monuments
The only constant in life is change. We grow old and die, buildings and monuments crumble to dust. Time goes by and progress marches on, but, as our society evolves are we improving or regressing? As a global community, we have lost our connection with nature in our race to consume. As a result, our communities are overrun with violence, pollution, and cultural and spiritual degradation. My paintings are abstractions of this concrete jungle. Combinations of yin and yang, nature and technology, the past and the present painted in the same space.
I look back to ancient man for inspiration, sampling images from places such as Africa, India, Native America, and China. My appropriation from these cultures is a sensitive one, for me these forms are metaphors for utopia. The paintings are abstractions of language, nature, urban landscape, technology, and the media. Compositions are built around a birds-eye view of a natural Eden overlapped and encroached upon by forms that allude to industry and modern man. Form is layered over form hiding the layers below like Graffiti on city walls.
The physical act of layering is a metaphor for history. Images buried in the deepest layers are excavated from anthropology, reformed into my own subconscious script. It is a script that is fogged over and pushed back into the distance like a memory. The hidden meanings and images draw the viewer in to be embraced by the paintings soft color and smooth shapes. The title of this painting connects the music that I was listening to during the creation, Wu-Tang Klan, and the commercialism of the entire industry of enslavement.
