Artist Statement 2011

My work is about observing unguarded gestural and facial expressions as portals to our inner worlds that, if made conscious, we are unable to explain or would rather conceal. I aim to expose the unconscious gap between what we experience and how we respond. I continually explore consciousness and the ethereal human experience as it contrasts with, and adapts to, new technological influences.

In 2006, as part of my Master's thesis in Education I committed to learning and teaching video to teenagers. The frenetic pace of the project in the face of gross time constraints came at the cost of human connection. However, during lunch hours I watched students concentrating on traditional pastime activities in the absence of technology. In 2008 - 2010, in response to this contrast, I painted twenty-one 40" square oil paintings, entitled, Slow Movement: a cultural reversal. The paintings show youth engaged against a backdrop of speedy Muybridge figures. I was studying the survival of human nature in the face of technological acceleration.

In 2011 my focus evolved from outward human connections to inner emotional experiences. I am investigating emotions as a visual source of visceral experience: remembering events to evoke and integrate repressed emotions; identifying, localizing and naming emotions; making tangible the intangible. This new work, entitled BrainTracts: in the heart of reason, examines the function of the brain in processing and generating emotions in the context of the Romantic painters, ancient philosophies, and emerging science.