Saturday, March 9, 2013

It's been WAYYYY too long!

Hi everyone!

Diana's email reminded me that it has been way too long since we touched base!

I'm going to open the conversation with some images of a painting series I've been working on. I haven't had opportunity to receive any critique on the work, so if you feel so inclined, critique away. If not, now you know what I'm working on! I can't wait to see what everyone else is doing!

Here is an artist statement that goes along with my current body of work:


“The becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the animal the human being becomes is not… a becoming lacks a subject distinct from itself…”
-Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia




Becoming animal (or other) is real, if not literal. In my current body of paintings, I explore what becoming means. As I currently attempt to understand it, becoming brings with it jouissance—a joyful agony, or an excess of pleasure so intense it is painful.

Often, when I sketch and paint, I try to conjure up ideas of becoming animal, becoming other, and jouissance. I want viewers to connect with these ideas, if only on a subtle level, but preferably on a visceral one. My paintings are traces of my trying to understand and express ideas of becoming and jouissance.

Becoming and jouissance are violent and grotesque, as are life, excess, real pleasure and pain. Jouissance is an orgasmic, tortured scream. Becoming is living—really living—in all of its agony and ecstasy. 



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