Work Statement

“There's an opposite to déjà vu. They call it jamais vu. It's when you meet the same people or visit places, again and again, but each time is the first. Everybody is always a stranger. Nothing is ever familiar.” – Chuck Palahniuk

“Like a word on a page that you’ve printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign. And you feel scared for a second, like you’ve lost something, even if you’re not sure what it is.”  – Sarah Dessen

 

My work has one foot in the pure joy of material exploration and the other in the serious contemplation of societal issues. This work was first shown at Buffalo Art Movement under the title "Jamais Vus" and is a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and ongoing war.  The work came about after reading an article about Ukrainian dancers who continued to train underground while the bombs reigned above. Dance and war are both very much about human interactions; both are about the collective unit, choreography of movement, and sheer emotional exertion.  Like in war itself, chance takes center stage in this series of paintings. I used random technological glitches to interfere in my initial stages, and have thus had to construct a more reactionary way of working to known and obvious source images – a way that removes me another step from familiarity and control.  As a painter studying the effects of trauma on memory and perception, I try to paint in a way that reflects my interest in the way the brain works when exposed to trauma.  I often explore thin layers, frenetic and searching brushwork, pentimenti, accident, and anomaly.  Intense color relationships and varied edges evoke certain surreal conditions that shimmer between reality and unreality – where the corporeal meets the abstract.