Early Works

IN my collaged paintings and installation pieces, dreams, archetypal imagery, mythological memory, spiritual questions and metaphysical history are the chosen subject matter I use to evoke ritual spaces that are suggestive of a transformation. The route I have followed and explored leads from painting, to sculpture, to interactive painting with live performance that “sculpts” the surrounding space, to use of theatrical space where set sculptures beckon for an actor’s action to complete and enliven them.

Many of the elements were “found objects” –either Nature’s discards or in the human shooting targets were found in a rundown house where old newspaper articles papered the walls.

The following  illustrate this course:

Paintings such as Star of Ishtar  and luminous air push beyond humankind’s physical shell to depict the energy state known as the human psyche. I have named these compositions “psychic landscapes”.

Expanding these “landscapes” into sculptural environmental work is a piece such as Tanabata which represents the space existing between the earth and stars.

The House in the Well combines an interactive painting with performance. Existing by itself as a painting, this piece can also be transformed with live action – its booklike “pages” can be turned and its fairy tale story can be dramatized by a performer. Each “page” is also representative of a direction and its energy properties (West – tidal, South – fire, North – steadily rhythmic, East – mercurial) which move the action. From its pockets, hidden props such as the “eye of light” (held by performer in slide) further illustrate the narrative. A performance with this piece will be upcoming in the future.

The set pieces of my theatrical works, are environments of archetypal form beckoning magical action. More than a visual backdrop for the stage area, they become catalysts which coerce transformative movement which would not occur without them.

I am interested in blurring the boundaries between art forms. My goal is to create a larger environmental space where the viewer can physically interact within a whole environment.

 

LW — 1994