Vanity
A Domestic Situation
Vanity explores the female sense of self. Camouflaged by a myriad of products, the heroine stands powerful before a glamorous mirror and vanity. Arms extended and facing upward, she simultaneously turns her back to the vanity. Victorious and confident, she meets the viewer. The painting recognizes that vanity can be a strength and weakness, depending on what she does with it.
Dirty Laundry
A Domestic Situation
Definition dirty laundry | private matters whose public exposure brings distress and embarrassment
Dirty Laundry (a domestic situation) traverses the systematic domestication of women, transcendentalism, the modernization of pragmatic feminism amongst the dichotomy of gender inequality.
Four female figures transcend and merge into the mechanics of the machine, the task blurring what defines the women from their prescribed functions. An illusion of playful escape emerges while the geometric white lines suggest the systematic grid.
Fanciful fabrics of pattern and colors, representational of life, immerse the women. Dirty laundry to be tasked. The work confers 19th Century “Cult of Domesticity” and the 20th Century “June Clever” while evaluating the ascent of women amongst modern day stereotypes and workplace/pay inequality.
Out of the Closet
A Domestic Situation
Out of the Closet is a colorful fantasy exploring labels and the female condition. Entrapped in luxury, a closet of her own making, the heroine looks directly at the viewer, turns her back, and transcends. No shame in her situation, emerging or not, is a decision of her own making, and though she is somewhat disguised by her possessions, she is also empowered.
Retail Therapy
A Domestic Situation
Retail Therapy evokes a sensory wonderland that visually delights and distracts from the day-to-day mundane of modern living. Shopping reduces residual sadness. And sadness is strongly associated with a sense that situational forces control the outcomes in one's life. Thus, the choices inherent in shopping may restore personal control over one's environment and inspire contentment. Studies suggest that when people feel things aren't going their way, getting precisely what they want can be a positive personal achievement. Shopping stimulates the senses.
Through the experience of something new, the bright lights and colorful displays combine to create an imaginative stimulative experience that removes one from their own reality. Through presentations, we project ourselves in satisfying environments. Browsing, scrolling, or window shopping can positively impact one's mood. This simple anticipation of the possibility of a reward or treat releases dopamine, the hormone neurotransmitter in the brain that makes people feel good. Dopamine increases the desire to continue to seek out things that make one feel good.
The Unbreakables
A Domestic Situation
The Unbreakables celebrate the female superpower of mental fortitude. Like diamonds since the beginning of time women bore the weight of the world and un-beheld led peoples, civilizations, and nations to endure and evolve.
Late Bloomer
A Domestic Situation
As for relationships, this Late Bloomer is always fashionably late. Our heroine’s flower adorned thrown awaits her arrival. The work transports us to a place beheld for the future where empty chairs hold space for what is to come. As for relationships, she’s always fashionably late.
ICON
A Domestic Situation
Gucci runway nostalgia for the compulsively couture.
5A
A Domestic Situation
Fifth Ave, Bergdorf Goodman inspired.
Les Bain
A Domestic Situation
Les Bain finds our socialite submerged in a moment of social detox as she retreats to “powder her nose”. Voyeurs, we are transported from the hustle and bustle to her sought serenity.
She’s Unbreakable
A Domestic Situation
She’s Unbreakable celebrates the female superpower of mental fortitude. Like diamonds since the beginning of time women bore the weight of the world and un-beheld led peoples, civilizations, and nations to endure and evolve.
Triplicate Service
A Domestic Situation
Ladies served first.
In Crowd
A Domestic Situation
Life, like fashion, if you’re not in, you’re out.
Namaste
(bitches)
A Domestic Situation
Luxe yoga, she’ll drink to that.
Game Over
A domestic Situation
Arcade for modern women.
Girl Painter
A Domestic Situation
Artist. Locked in a game of her own creations.
Tslagi
The Dance of Life
Tslagi, the Medicine Dance of Life, is an ancient and sacred Cherokee movement of meditation for balance, alignment and prayer. The essence of this movement is to honor, share, and integrate the spiritual gifts and qualities of the Four Directions as well as Father Sky and Mother Earth.
The dance begins facing East, the direction of the far-seeing eagle (intuition, psychic abilities, and the patterns within people) making a large, wide circular motion as if making a circle of protection around the Earth. Motion stops with palms down releasing that blessing into the earth. The dancer steps back with the left foot and left arm (as if a wing of a bird) followed by the right foot and right arm. Reaching down in front with both hands, gathers Mother Earth's energy the pulls it straight up, through the body and reaches toward the sky giving away the Earth's Energy to Father Sky. The dancer then gathers the Creative Sky energy and pulls it down through the body and with palms down gives it away to the Earth. The movement is repeated on the left side.
Palms up offering the Earth's Energy to Father Sky, palms down offering Father Sky's Energy to Mother Earth. Once the body is balanced, the feminine left side and the masculine right side are each ready to lead. The dancer gathers the energy of the East, the light of the morning sun and the far-seeing eagle and pulls it through their heart as if drawing the string of a bow while rotating toward the West.
The right hand reaches into the West (the place of introspection, dreams, reflection on life and the day you have just lived). Pulling the Western energy through the body and again giving it away to the Earth. Next the dancer faces the South and repeats the basic movements. The South is the place of trust and the innocence of childhood. The color is green, that of new life in plants. Again the dancer gathers Earth's energy and draw it straight up through the body and gives it to Sky. Balancing Earth and Sky energy within oneself through the process of gathering and giving away. Earth is gathered and given away to the Sky. Sky is gathered and give away to Earth.
Next the dancer gathers the South's innocent trust. Rotating toward the right side, pulls an imagined bow. The bow string becomes an arrow as the body rotates into the North. The motion is the giving away of the South's energy to the North and gathering the North's energy (wisdom, power, crystallization of knowledge like snow) and pulling it back through the heart to give away the energy to Earth. The dancer faces West, color black (the place of the setting sun) and repeats the basic motions. Gathering Earth's energy and giving it to Sky then gathering the Sky's energy and pulling it down to the Earth. Each side (the male and female) leads until the dancer faces North and repeats the movements, gathering North's energy and giving it away to South.
The practice of Tslagi balances one within one's self and aligns the male and the female. Tslagi restores harmony with the environment and with all people from every direction. Tslagi is one painting in a series of four. Four works exploring the four pillars of humanity that the artist believes are necessary yet neglected in modern society. In Tslagi, Michele Utley Voigt offers the Dance of Life.
#aPOPcalypse
apocalypse
noun
1. ( initial capital letter ) revelation (def 4).
2. any of a class of Jewish or Christian writings that appeared from about 200 b.c. to a.d. 350 and wereassumed to make revelations of the ultimate divine purpose.
3. a prophetic revelation, especially concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil.
Origin of apocalypse
1125-75; Middle English < Late Latin apocalypsis < Greek apokálypsis revelation, equivalent to apokalýp(tein) to uncover, reveal ( apo- apo- + kalýptein to cover, conceal) + -sis -sis
(Ancient Greek: ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis, from ἀπό and καλύπτω, literally meaning "an uncovering") is a disclosure of knowledge or revelation. In religious and occult concepts it is usually a disclosure of something hidden, "a vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities". Historically, the term has a heavy religious connotation as commonly seen in the prophetic revelations of eschatology and were obtained through dreams or spiritual visions. In the biblical book of revelation apocalypse says to be the complete and final destruction of the world.
pop
verb (used without object), popped, pop·ping.
to make a short, quick, explosive sound: The cork popped.
to burst open with such a sound, as chestnuts or corn in roasting.
to come or go quickly, suddenly, or unexpectedly:
pop art
noun
1. art based on modern popular culture and the mass media, especially as a critical or ironic comment on traditional fine art values. Pop Art was the art of popular culture. It was the visual art movement that characterized a sense of optimism during the post war consumer boom of the 1950's and 1960's. Pop art favored realism, everyday (even mundane) imagery, and heavy doses of irony and wit.
Shattered Glass
There will be no glass above our head. We will rise. We will break barriers.
Shattered Glass is a vibrant celebration. The movement of the composition is circular as it progresses to upper linear division. It contains five female figures within the circular containment. The figures are of one individual as they divide and merge to express movement.
The lower left figure depicts a woman strong and confident looking up at her opposition. Her next movement is forward. She lunges in with extended elbow to penetrate the glass. Her hand is open to shield her face from the fallout and debris. She then turns her back to privately go further, higher, while still shielding her face. Turned and ascending she begins to rise shattering the barrier that restricted her. She continues to go higher and further as she exceeds the paintings surface to rise above the pictorial plane.
The pallet of the background is allegiant and patriotic although the placement of color calls reference to a target. Shattered Glass is bold and bright as the female(s) is agile, colorful and strong.
American Woman
American Woman is a coming of age celebration depicted through a tribal dance endowing and commending the strength of the American woman. The painting contains five female figures engaged in a circular interchange and movement. The Sunrise Ceremony serves many purposes in the American Indigenous community- personally, spiritually and communally - and is one of the most memorable and significant experiences of Indigenous females.
The ceremony itself re-enacts the “myth of Creation”, and the girls connect deeply to spiritual heritage. In their connection they gain command over weaknesses and the dark forces of their nature, and come to know their own spiritual power, sacredness and goodness. The Sunrise Ceremony leads the girls to find their own ability to heal. They learn about what it means to become a woman, through attunement to the physical manifestations of womanhood as well as the development of physical strength and endurance. The ceremony requires rigorous physical training to prepare for the “sacred ordeal” of four days of dancing.
I offer this painting, poised at a time when contemporary women and girls call to question and denounce the accepted “rites of passage and initiations” into American womanhood.
She Defies Gravity
She Defies Gravity is composed of one female flying, reaching to the sky while she is still hovering over the place that once bound her. Graceful, she transcends the complicated and divided world of systems, structures, with highlights of nature, to reach and rise above. Three figures conjoin to depict her movement. The figures enlighten and shape almost as one. She is encouraged by the heavens as her hands reach above and beyond her.
She Defies Gravity is representational of the heights contemporary girls and women are considering as they release the lies and shackles of misogyny. At a time when publically women are proclaiming #metoo and denouncing the “casting couch” “boy takes girl” economy, She Defies Gravity celebrates the women who bravely rise.
Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance is a merger of the past and the present. Lessons lost in history now repeat in cast, geographical proximity and deeds. This work is light filled and prisms out the circular movement known as the Ghost Dance (Natdia) a spiritual movement that came about in the late 1880s when conditions were bad on Indian reservations and Native Americans needed something to give them hope. This movement found its origin in a Paiute Indian named Wovoka, who announced that he was the messiah come to earth to prepare the Indians for their salvation.
The movement began with a dream by Wovoka, a Northern Paiute, during the solar eclipse on January 1, 1889. He claimed that, in his dream, he was taken into the spirit world and saw all Native Americans being taken up into the sky and the Earth opening up to swallow all Whites and to revert back to its natural state. The Native Americans, along with their ancestors, were put back upon the earth to live in peace. He also claimed that he was shown that, by dancing the round-dance continuously, the dream would become a reality and the participants would enjoy the new Earth.
His teachings followed a previous Paiute tradition predicting a Paiute renaissance. Varying somewhat, it contained much Christian doctrine. He also told them to remain peaceful and keep the reason for the dance secret from the Whites. Wovoka's message spread quickly to other Native American peoples and soon many of them were fully dedicated to the movement. Representatives from tribes all over the nation came to Nevada to meet with Wovoka and learn to dance the Ghost Dance and to sing Ghost Dance songs.
The dance as told by Wovoka went something like this: "When you get home you must begin a dance and continue for five days. Dance for four successive nights, and on the last night continue dancing until the morning of the fifth day, when all must bathe in the river and then return to their homes. You must all do this in the same way. ...I want you to dance every six weeks. Make a feast at the dance and have food that everybody may eat."
The Natdia, it was claimed, would bring about renewal of the native society and decline in the influence of the Whites. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents grew disturbed when they became aware that so many Indians were coming together and participating in a new and unknown event.
In early October, 1890, Kicking Bear, a Minneconjou Sioux Indian, visited Sitting Bull at Standing Rock telling him of his visit to Wovoka. They told him of the great number of other Indians who were there as well, referring to Wovoka as the Christ. And they told him of the prophecy that the next spring, when the grass was high, the earth would be covered with new soil and bury all the white men. The new soil would be covered with sweet grass, running water and trees and the great herds of buffalo and wild horses would return.
All Indians who danced the Ghost Dance would be taken up into the air and suspended there while the new earth was being laid down. Then they would be returned to the earth along with the ghosts of their ancestors.
When the dance spread to the Lakota, the BIA agents became alarmed. They claimed that the Lakota developed a militaristic approach to the dance and began making "ghost shirts" they thought would protect them from bullets. They also spoke openly about why they were dancing. The BIA agent in charge of the Lakota eventually sent the tribal police to arrest Sitting Bull, a leader respected among the Dakota, to force him to stop the dance. In the struggle that followed, Sitting Bull was killed along with a number of policemen. A small detachment of cavalry eventually rescued the remaining policemen.
Following the killing of Sitting Bull, the United States sent the Seventh Cavalry to "disarm the Lakota and take control." During the events that followed, now known as the Wounded Knee Massacre on December 29, 1890, 457 U.S. soldiers opened fire upon the Sioux killing more than 200 of them. The Ghost Dance reached its peak just before the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
When it became apparent that ghost shirts did not protect from bullets and the expected resurrection did not happen, most former believers quit the Ghost Dance. Wovoka, disturbed by the death threats and disappointed with the many reinterpretations of his vision, gave up his public speaking. However, he remained well-respected among his followers and continued his religious activities. He traveled and received visitors until the end of his life in 1932. There are still members of the religious movement today.
Believers in the Ghost Dance spirituality are convinced that performing the Ghost Dance will eventually reunite them with their ancestors coming by railway from the spirit world. The ancestor spirits, including the spirit of Jesus, are called upon to heal the sick and to help protect Mother Earth. Meanwhile, the world will return to a primordial state of natural beauty, opening up to swallow up all other people (those who do not have a strong spirituality based upon the earth). The performers of the Ghost Dance theoretically will float in safety above with their ancestors, family, and peoples of the world who follow the extensive spirituality.
Rilasciare
Rilasciare requires the release of all captivity. Captivity of the trafficked, the mentally ill, and the enslaved. In today’s modern society, thirty million people worldwide are considered slaves and three hundred million people suffer from depression. More women than men.
Rilasciare’s composition contains five female figures from supine to erect fragmenting one another in a mutation of bodies, minds, energy and time. The figures progress from the bottom of the composition to the top depicting their climb to freedom. Thirty hands of various degrees of visibility outreach and rise representational of wings to flight. Rilasciare offers a vision of the beauty of the release.
Every year approximately six to eight hundred thousand women and children are trafficked across international borders. Trafficking primarily involves exploitation which comes in many forms, including: forcing victims into prostitution, subjecting victims to slavery or involuntary servitude and compelling victims to commit sex acts for the purpose of creating pornography.
According to some estimates, approximately eighty-percent of trafficking involves sexual exploitation, and nineteen-percent involves labor exploitation. Globally, the average cost of a slave is under one hundred US dollars. Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Every year close to eight hundred thousand people die due to suicide.
Ubi Caritas
Ubi Caritas came as an instantaneous vision. An image from song conceived and relevant in context. With birth it interjected process. It tendered a missive.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est. Wherever we find true charity, God is there. In volatile periods of conflict and battle, in the utmost instances of evil and horror; charity enters, God is there.
Ubi Caritas et amor Deus ibi est. Where charitable acts and love are genuine in that moment, God is there. In the simplest behaviors and in tranquility, whenever true charity and love is extend to another, God is there.
The composition of Ubi Caritas began with five figures their divisions unto themselves with geometric planes angled to peak. On top of darkness, the protagonist is on her back, vibrant in color, helpless is form. Two figures distend on the left and two figures on the right. On the right serene figures of charity transcend, arms extended wide offering aide. Soaring down on the left, champions enter posed to uplift, representational of love.
In process a sixth figure entered, composition center. Not perfectly contrived nor clearly conceived. Somehow in that imperfection, God is there.
Broken Treaties
Broken Treaties is historic and modern-day.
For centuries treaties have defined the relationship between Native American people, their nations and the United States. Over 500 treaties were made with American Indian Tribes, primarily for land acquisitions, and 500 treaties were also broken, changed, or nullified when it served the government’s interest.
This work depicts the land runs that revoked Native American territory given to them by the U.S. government after they were forced from their ancestral homelands. The “land rush” opened tribal lands for settlers to homestead based on a first arrival basis.
The composition of Broken Treaties contains six horses charging and four figures invaded. They are splintered by themselves, the stampede and one another. The work’s four figures embody a Witness, a Refugee, a Demonstrator and a Deity.
The Witness arises in the upper left corner perched above the incident; shoulder to hand elevated. The Refugee evacuates mid composition looking back at her intruder as she sprints forward. The Demonstrator; a male figure, squats at the bottom of the work. Eyes up, he extends one arm and hand with pointer finger ascending. His other hand treads downward to fist. Potently he proclaims the injustice.
The Deity; their Great Spirit, surges from the scene in serenity and grace. Her face identifiable and lovely. She envelops the pilfering and enfolds the chaos within her limbs.
Broken Treaties is pertinent now. Modern nations are calling for the elimination and restriction of immigration and refugees. At this same moment political groups, movements and governments are coming to cause the flight of populations from their native and ancestral lands. Broken Treaties recounts the first immigrants and refugees in the United States; the “colonists”, whom themselves escaped tyranny and religious persecution crudely to impose it on Native American tribes and nations. Repeatedly posing and rescinding treaties usurping native’s land, destroying their lives, resources and culture.
Brin de Nostalgie
Brin de Nostalgie exists as an instantaneous visceral response to the November 13, 2015 terror attacks upon Paris. The painting bids the public to linger with a trace of nostalgia in favor of the conventional beauty and grace of Paris as it resonates in the city’s soul confirmed by its’ unparalleled monuments, architecture, music, art and citizens.
The composition; divided in architectural planes mimicking the Eiffel Tower, contains eight people overlapped and dissected by themselves and one another. Grappling hands and feet ascend animating compound emotions. The figures interact interwoven with their own shadows grounding the chaos and resurrection to a real space and time.
The structural foundation of the underlying Eiffel Tower conducts the viewer from the darker turmoil spinning underneath to the colorful higher layers of beauty ever present and still remaining. Brin de Nostalgie transcends horror to splendor. It counters atrocity with the beauty of Paris as disclosed in the fragmented form of Degas’s ballerinas whom arise from bedlam to coexist with Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms, the blossoms that once hung in the Paris nursery of his nephew and Godchild, Vincent.
Yeshua
Yeshua; Birth to Resurrection is historic and modern as it calls to question the modern day persecution of Jews and Christians alike. The composition contains two boys, five men, a mother and an infant. The boys of varying ages depict the young Yeshua. One is on his knees at temple and the other steps forward, arms extended, he is proclaiming and teaching. In the middle, a muscular Yeshua lifts and carries another man whom is week or lifeless, back facing and in the form of the cross. To their side is a mature Yeshua whom raises his hand to heaven.
At the top of the work, light and bright, a large head of the mother Mary leans in to nestle the baby Yeshua in her arms. Her hand cradles the baby’s tender head as her nose leans in to rest on his. In the midst of these two faces the resurrection occurs. Yeshua rises up into the sky, both arms extended out like a bird as he takes flight. Rays of light crown the painting and pronounce the King and Messiah. The lower background is geometrically divided representational of the many stages of Yeshua’s life.
I was compelled to create a portrait of Yeshua, the Jewish Jesus Christ from birth to resurrection in one composition. In particular I was very influenced by depictions of Jesus throughout art history and the number of Jewish artists that painted Jesus.
Medieval and Renaissance artworks commonly Christianized Jesus, his family and close followers while omitting their Jewish identities. This phenomenon contributed significantly to the historic rift between Christianity and Judaism by picturing Jesus and Jews as separate in religion and ethnicity.
Recently, there have been efforts to explore the distortions and misrepresentation in artworks. The 2011-2012 exhibit Rembrandt and the Images of Jesus, curated by the Louvre, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts featured Rembrandt’s paintings of a Jewish Jesus. For Rembrandt, working from a Jewish model would have been a means of returning to a historical truth, or portraying Jesus unadulterated, as the Jew that he was — a form of realism scoffing at tradition. — the Louvre commented.
My interest begins in the paintings of Jewish artist Marc Chagall, and his surprising trove of paintings of Jesus as Jew and Christian, bonded by the theme of suffering. The past Chagall exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York City, Love, War and Exile included 24 paintings that focus on the crucifixion, often showing Jesus with a prayer shawl rather than a loin cloth, in a context of Holocaust persecutions. Almost half of the works in the Jewish Museum exhibit center around the crucifixion — and many more of Chagall’s Jesus and crucifixion paintings were not included in the exhibit including his most famous crucifixion painting, “White Crucifixion”. Chagall was not alone among 19- and 20th-century Jewish artists to create artworks of Jesus, and sometimes of a Jewish Jesus. Art scholar Ziva Amishai-Maisels explains that artists sought to address anti-Semitism:
“Faced with rising anti-Semitism throughout Europe and pogroms in Russia from 1871 on, Jewish writers and artists tried to explain to Christians that in persecuting Jews they were attacking the brothers of their Christ rather than emulating his example of humility and charity. The first Jewish artist to express these ideas was Mark Antokolsky, a Russian working in Rome, who in 1873 sculpted Jesus before his judges, stressing his Jewish facial features — a slightly hooked nose and side-curls — and depicting him in a skullcap and a costume that recalls a prayer shawl. He stated explicitly in his letters to his Russian Christian patrons that his purpose in doing so was to warn Christians that they were not abiding by Jesus’ doctrines, and that in attacking Jews they were persecuting Jesus himself.
German artist Max Liebermann painted the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple. But faced with public criticism that his image of young Jesus was too Jewish, Liebermann capitulated and redid it, removing Semitic features and giving Jesus blond curls.
Later Jewish artists addressed the horrors of the Holocaust. In addition to the works of Marc Chagall, most frequently cited is the 1942 exhibit “Modern Christs” at the Puma Gallery in New York City. Of the 26 artists who contributed to the exhibit, 17 were Jewish. Aside from a few of the most prominent artists in this show like Adolph Gottlieb, Louise Nevelson, Max Weber and Max Beckmann, many of the others are less known and are rarely if ever mentioned in references to the exhibit.
l’ ame de la femme
l’ame de la femme forges into the complex layers of female beauty to examine, embrace and extract the inner magnificence of women.
The composition contains the layering of the fragmentation of twelve female figures upon one another. The plane is of figural division constituted within a series of spheres. The circular spiral motion reinforces the extraction of the superficial stratums.
The interior’s intangible shapes and forms are bottomless in color. The fused shapes blossom as the soul undoes and extends. Multitudes of hands, feet, fingers and toes some perceptible; many ghostlike, extend out of the creation tugging as recognizable configurations emphasizing the unfolding.
Shadows appear within the layers emerging as solid real space, a refuge in the unfamiliar setting.
Procession of 172 Souls
Procession is a subject that I have painted before. One that I will paint again. Through each work I endeavor to better convey the energy and atmosphere following the atrocity. The Procession of 172 Souls to Heaven unveils a peace and beauty that outlives barbarity.
It is my second visualization of the ether as innocence passes after the loss of lives caused by an act of terrorism. This act of terror is personal to me. “On April 19, 1995 a bomb rang out, a bomb so tragic it was heard around the world.” Procession of 172 Souls memorializes the lives tragically taken as a result of the bombing of the Federal Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I have added additional souls of significant people in remembrance of their tragic deaths as they join the massive procession.
The composition of the work offers the division of the plane by multiple figures interacting within a geometrical plane divided as such to enable a disassociation of the figures and to progress the forms from the bottom of the painting to the top. The painting launches from shadowy puddles as figures extend out and emerge from the fragmentation. Bodies become slightly recognizable as they arise from crouched head low to fully erect. Color and light transitions with the progression further emphasizing the release.
O Thus She Stood
O Thus She Stood depicts five female figures rising from face down crouch to stand up tall. The multiple figures are actually a single figure in the stages of being knocked to the ground and exhorting herself to stand back up.
No state of human existence is ever static. Peace of persons’, counties’, and minds’ is an incessant process. O Thus She Stood depicts a constant determination toward the renaissance of amity.
It demonstrates the rise and fall of a singular female figure pushing herself up from the underside, starting to her feet, attaining balance, upended in grace. In completion she experiences resurrection. Momentarily glorified then knocked back underbelly.
The masking of the figure(s) permits anonymity and universality by detaching the viewer from real physical representation or perception of the individual. The background is comprised of many planes divided. Chilled abstracted geometric shapes and shading demonstrate the energy, emotion, and intangibles of the peace making. A flat shadow grounds the progressive figures providing a realm of reality and a base of truth.
The composition of the life size figures and electric bursts of shading are such that the viewers’ eyes are drawn up from the bottom of the pictorial plane to the top and down again emphasizing the continuum and the fortitude of the peace seeker.
Fait Accompli
Fait Accompli: An accomplished, presumably irreversible deed or fact
A thing or act accomplished and presumably irreversible
An action which has already been done and which cannot be changed
Fait Accompli depicts two figures one crouched and one extending, in the middle an infant. The crouched figure covers her heavy head while passing the child to the receiving figure. The background is divide and fragmented as the transaction is without comprehension.
This painting depicts the immensity of the task and the strength of the decision maker whom chooses the passing of one’s child to another (others) for the survival or betterment of that child. It also bares the immensity of the task and the potency of the one(s) accepting the child.
Since the beginning of time, since the evolution of the human species, for the innate existence of the species child survival has been communal. In all cultures, nations and times. It has always taken the collective to raise one.
Azadi آزادی: freedom and liberty, Farsi
Azadi voices the rapture and sovereignty of global liberation for women.
In this work our heroine emancipates herself from the murky darkness of imprisonment. Her bareness demonstrates her courage while her transparent frock predicts her vulnerability.
Valiantly the captive throws open the windows. Portholes undone, they served as her vista of a foreign world of rights not her own.
Positioned she is prepared to vault into a bright, divided, and complex world. Valor is greeted by uncertainty.
Her liberty; a universal human right, a release from ignorance, servitude and oppression.
Sinu Ina
“Sinu Ina (Nigerian – Yoruba translation: Into the Light) shows three figures, sit to stand, one behind the other, cloaked in gradations of shadows. The center figure sits in a puddle of darkness, face veiled. The second begins to rise out of shadow and the third transcends into great light. The dark to light process of this painting represents the process of becoming educated. The simple act of educating girls has been under attack for years.
And not just in Nigeria.
This work seeks global educational equality for girls.
Sinu Ina was created in support of “Smart Girls” and Half the Sky Movement. For more information – please visit http://www.halftheskymovement.org/ “
premiere en rouge
premiere en rouge: A female figure walks a red carpet shaped in her shadow. The red carpet she walks may be any stage or event in her life; a premier for her. The plane is divided and the shadows are painted flat. The shadow is what grounds the figure to a real and tangible situation. Her shadow is red to express the importance of the walk she is taking. The background is divided into an expressive explosion of figures, faces and energy that surrounds the situation; currently present or passed prior. The division is an expression of everything that is happening around her.