Faultlines
The story of these paintings started with an image called ARTIST DRAWING from the MODEL,1639 that was done in etching,drypoint and burin by Rembrandt. The contemporary "look" of that image compelled me to experiment with combining a photo and watercolor painting. Eventually, I devised a way of adhering part of a photo to a piece of watercolor paper and completing the image with drawing and painting.
As I was working a few things became clear to me, for example, my eyes kept switching back and forth between the photo and painting. Regardless of the subject matter, the differences of:
opacity transparency
softness hardness
blurry sharp
pixelation smoothness
electronic reproduction human
mathematical & literate &
abstract emotional
brings attention first to the painting, then to the photo and finally to the line where both meet-the fault line.
There is a quiet kind of collision that occurs at this line and as a result the painting seems to fall away from the photo. The photo is solid, confident and aloof. The painting is a smooth gesture or transparently soft but always uncertainly human.
The fault line divides and connects two parts of a whole image. An unintended consequence that occurs in some of these paintings is a optical illusion. If the line dividing the two parts is covered, the difference between the two values disappears.
When the border between these two processes can't be seen, the backgrounds melt into each other.
In an effort to repair the collision, I think of this work as a temenos in the form of an image that holds two different processes in balance to see thru to an image that is simultaneous, complete and whole.
