The focus of my recent paintings is the interior world of
the human body. In an attempt forge a connection between the scientific and the
spiritual, I transform small dispassionate photographs of cadavers culled from
medical textbooks into meticulously rendered oil
paintings.
This work was initially inspired by my husband’s experiences
dissecting the deceased as a part of his medical education. I intend, however, to give rise to questions
of existence rather than provide explanations of physiology. The works themselves are highly
labor-intensive and larger than human scale. Painting in this way enables me to
honor and investigate death while simultaneously exploring my own fascination with
the internal spaces of the body. Concentrating
often on my subjects’ necks and genitals as physiological and psychological hubs
of communication, my aim is to invite the viewer to reflect on the
vulnerabilities and complexities of living a human life, and on the subsequent
quest for emotional connection.
Excavating these deeply personal subcutaneous spaces forces
me to confront my own fear and awe of the unknown and the uncontrollable.
For
both my undergraduate thesis at Reed
College and early
graduate work at the San Francisco Art Institute, I investigated issues of
perception by collaboratively assisting two young persons with autism pursue
their own artistic interests. We made photographs, discussed their
significance, and then re-presented these images through a series of paintings.
As products of the camera’s mechanical eye, these individual’s photographs
function as a middle ground whereupon our divergent perceptions might be
mediated. Consequently, the oil paintings we have created consist of images derived
directly from photographs, informed by my collaborators’ ideas, and at times
created in collaboration with them. Glimpsing into the world of autistic
persons has significantly altered my understanding of the nature of perception
and of what it is to create meaning. To be aesthetically responsive to works of
art requires that one be responsive to features of images that a culturally
isolated individual is incapable of ascertaining. Persons with autism suffer
from just such isolation. The autist is suspended in a world of visual truth;
my collaborators are intelligent human beings, but they do not have the
capacity for culturally-influenced artistic competence.
Collaborating with Rachel and Meyshe—witnessing their
photographic methods, results, and responses to our work—has forced me into an
acute awareness that the relationship between the motivation of the creator and
the creation itself reveals a larger matrix of relationships between an
individual, the object, and the culture of which the creator is (even
passively) a part. By examining their artwork, I have come to recognize that
all aspects of perception are ideologically conditioned, and to acknowledge the
integral role contexts of reception play in the production of meaning. | 
