THE COLOR OF ABSENCE
Over the past few years, I have noticed a sense of absence, disconnection, and disquiet permeating my life and those around me.
Creating constructed visual narratives allows me to express visually what I cannot articulate with words: How do you describe Absence?
Absence comes in many conflicting forms – longing despite proximity, loneliness within the sunny illusion of domestic tranquility, shadows on a sunny day, realism with illusion.
As a story-teller, I create these cinematic tableaux to grapple with and express ambiguities. Each image is a separate story, immediately personal.
My visual narratives expand on the noir tradition of exposing fragility, longing, and lost kinship. I place my subjects in uncertain settings, just out of reach of companionship. They are as elusive as a shadow or are absorbed in their interior lives. The play of light within a shadowy space - with its evocation of silence - gradually brings on a sense of existential isolation. An empty space suggests an absence or the liminal space between this world and the next. Geometry, especially in the use of rectangles and diagonals, seem to suggest a sense of stability, refuge, and a solid foundation, but it can’t submerge one’s sense of unease. Vibrant fantasies trap viewers in a distorted perception of time and space, eventually offering an ‘escape hatch’ by way of a lit window, a mirror, or door left ajar.
