Is there a beauty to abstracting reality, or is it dangerous?

Each of these pieces is an experiment on the dangers of abstraction.

I started with smears and dabs, then I detailed them into a particularity. We often turn feelings into words. Experience into symbols. What if I did the reverse? I let symbols explain my experience…..

There was no sketch. No plan. No resolution. I had to make the mark, see, and decide if it would become more.  Lines and smudges and spills and dashes. Transformed into a face, a bird, a flower.

Uninhibited mark-making isn’t randomness. It requires a resolute will to be undone—surrender. I created these pieces during Lent, a time when I was attempting to give up my desire for control. 

What if we chose not to logicize our lived reality? What if intuitive movements were valuable symbols?

How is the soul? What are her movements? I let myself sit in the unknowing. Painting was my walking along the bridge between my mind and body.

Understanding bleeding is important. When you follow how you bleed, you know what pains you. A central focus of this exhibition was allowing the bleeds of color on a canvas to turn into an identity. A blossom of red revealed His eye.