hybrid series

May 2019

When making my 2017 show Biota, I was inspired by a little planthopper that had evolved a small bio-gear in its hind legs. I thought of it as a perfect mechanical/insect hybrid.   An early idea for the show was to paint abstract versions of hybrids, but it didn’t really come about–I went into insects, then political art for a bit, then back to insects as themes.  But I really liked the idea of blending animals with insects, flowers with bugs, goats with blooms or dragonflies or whatever came about.  There is a lovely egalitarianism I associate with creating hybrids. 

As I began working with Michael David before his Brooklyn, NY Residency in early 2019, I was experimenting with black and white.  By the time I came home I had a renewed energy for pushing them forward.  With his guidance and suggestions, I started making pieces that got closer and closer to what I was trying to express.  Visually they are completely different from my other work.  I paid less attention to the design and more attention to my intuition.  They felt more painterly than planned out.  Because they are encaustic, whatever brushiness they had melted into soft swirls and smooth washes of light over dark. 

One afternoon Michael suggested adding Prussian blue to the black to make it a bit more palatable, and it was like magic.  The somewhat spooky images became more medical feeling, adding an intensity.  They were suddenly akin to the angiograms I’d seen of my dad’s heart after a his open heart surgery. 

I had been studying a book of x-rays from the 1980’s and was hoping to make work that resembled parts of plants, animals and humans as well as x-rays. The paintings soon became an odd blend of that plus cattle and deep-sea fish.  Some reminded me of urchins or owls—some resembled gills, bones, snakes, horns, ghosts, jellies, sea cucumbers and the occasional goat.