Shrouds

Shroud

Alberian Shroud II, acrylic on canvas, 20" x 24", © 2004

Statement

Shrouds. A shroud. Many shrouds. Paintings as garments, as veils. Paintings that conceal and in their concealing reveal new ways of looking at the world.

My work, a series of paintings called “Shrouds,” combines my love of pattern with the face, creating the illusion of fabric folding, swirling and shifting over the contours of the skull. They were started before the events of September 11. But since that day the paintings appear more and more to me as crumpled facades. The spaces filled in with bright bursts of color, the textures deepened to incorporate differently hued whites. The white spaces are not so much empty as subdued and reflective. They are the eyes through which you view the storm. They are the silences between the lines.

Since the WTC site is starting to be rebuilt, I am doing a “Rebirth” series with exuberant color and more complex patterns. What used to be is now all color. In my recent paintings, I am working with Joseph Albers flip-flop perspective drawings, translating them into color, and playing with scale, either making the patterns on the smaller or larger, so the face recedes or projects. This series is much smaller but I hope just as dense.

Now I am working on a series of mask-like paintings based on various ethnic styles and imaginative colors as well a series called Mask fragments which deal more with pattern, scale, and issues of abstraction. In these paintings I am drawn to cartoon figures such as monsters and unicorns that hint at a story.

“Shrouds” is the result of this rebirth, this renewal of purpose. Each “Shroud” is a portrait of a self in continual change and a culture in crisis.