Painting
2005 - 2009
Materiality, crafting, and tactility are at the core of my painting practice. I use dots of brightly colored paint, patterned fabrics, glimmering jewels, and other decorative substances to piece together compositions that explore an identity formed by a diasporic history. Trafficking in traditionally mass marketed materials, such as puffy paint and glitter, it is my desire to utilize the products of “Michael’s Craft” – as a plastic adventure into cultural tourism and ready-made arts and crafts.
As a result of this component in my work, I democratically value both techniques acquired in my formal education as an artist and those encountered as an educator and traveler. My paintings weave together personal and mythological stories, collapsing any linear sense of history by referring to diverse historical periods, religions, and art movements.
The labor intensity of my canvases mimics the performative acts of women’s work, tasks that are repetitive and usually made anonymously. It is through conducting these stylized acts within the context of my studio that I reconstruct my own fragmented identity. Many of my paintings are taken directly from written dreams and waking fantasies of an alienated homeland. Images of estranged people, exotic creatures, and acid-colored landscapes intertwine in dream-like utopias, falling in and out of logical situations across the canvas.
Materiality, crafting, and tactility are at the core of my painting practice. I use dots of brightly colored paint, patterned fabrics, glimmering jewels, and other decorative substances to piece together compositions that explore an identity formed by a diasporic history. Trafficking in traditionally mass marketed materials, such as puffy paint and glitter, it is my desire to utilize the products of “Michael’s Craft” – as a plastic adventure into cultural tourism and ready-made arts and crafts.
As a result of this component in my work, I democratically value both techniques acquired in my formal education as an artist and those encountered as an educator and traveler. My paintings weave together personal and mythological stories, collapsing any linear sense of history by referring to diverse historical periods, religions, and art movements.
The labor intensity of my canvases mimics the performative acts of women’s work, tasks that are repetitive and usually made anonymously. It is through conducting these stylized acts within the context of my studio that I reconstruct my own fragmented identity. Many of my paintings are taken directly from written dreams and waking fantasies of an alienated homeland. Images of estranged people, exotic creatures, and acid-colored landscapes intertwine in dream-like utopias, falling in and out of logical situations across the canvas.
