Invisible Design (Blindfolded), Gesso and Oil on Canvas, 72x72, 2007

Collapse I (Blindfolded), Gesso and Oil on Canvas, 72x72, 2007

Back Flip Into the Abyss

After a month of grad school, I decided to make radical changes with my work. I was inspired, in part, by a 2-day workshop in September with renowned Butoh performer Oguri. One aspect of his presentation focused on slowness through total body awareness in memory, space and time. I began to think more about the kind of actions needed to accomplish paintings and how I could materialize these elements in my own work. I began by inverting every aspect of my tendencies opting for a radically changed palette, employing less conventional tools, reordering processes, experimenting with a wider range of materials, and complicating matters with varying levels of distancing in both visibility and temporality. Thusly, I would spend the next several months making paintings somewhere between conscious and unconscious states looking for subtler shades of perception.