Acrylic Paintings

“They Flash upon that Inward Eye” is inspired by William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” which in turn refers to the myth of Narcissus. The prevalence of digital media in the lives of our adolescents creates moments of connection, isolation, inspiration and introspection. We have come into an age wherein technology has achieved epic and poetic proportions within the intimate space of a teen and their telephone. The implications of this new relationship will only be evident as this generation comes into maturity. My current paintings express this relationship between language and image, digital and analog

They Flash upon that Inward Eye, acrylic on wood, 2021

In reference to Part I of Portrait of a Lady by T.S. Eliot, “You have the scene arrange itself – as it will seem to do-”

The iBird whirled in the autumn winds,
attracting followers as part of the pantomime.

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a iBird
Are one.

I do not know which to download,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The iBird whistling
Or just after.

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the iBird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable code.

O thin men of San Jose,
Why do you imagine golden tweets?
Do you not see how the iBird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable streaming services;
But I know, too,
That the iBird is involved
In what I know.

When the iBird flew out of sight,
It pinned the edge
Of one of many circles.

At the sight of iBirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the human traffickers of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

He rode over Silicon Valley
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his autonomous equipage
For iBirds.

The river of information is moving.
The iBird must be flying.

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The iBird sat smsing
In the cedar-limbs.

Till Siri’s Voices Wake Us, Acrylic on wood. 2019

Deze diptiek is het eerste werk uit een nieuwe serie over digitalisering, automatisering en “compartmentalising.” Die compartmentalising is tegelijkertijd het organiseren en het verknippen van beeld en geest. Recaptcha refereert aan een computersysteem dat ontworpen is om vast te stellen dat een gebruiker een mens is. Hierdoor bewijs je dat je geen robot bent, hoewel je bestaan volledig vervlochten is met de digitale wereld. Door de overvloed aan digitale beelden is de natuurlijke wereld onwerkelijk of virtueel geworden. De grens tussen werkelijkheid, dromen en de virtuele wereld vervaagt. Het versplinterde uitzicht in dit schilderij toont een achtertuin en de heuvels van San Francisco, een stad gedomineerd door Silicon Valley. De schaal perziken, pruimen en abrikozen vormt het centrum rondom een gesprek over behoeftes aan fysieke schoonheid, technologie en dat wat ons voedt.