My work explores the purpose of the story as found in religion, myth and fairy tale. I examine the power these stories have, how they affect our culture and the social mores they define. My visual language derives from symbolic imagery that has been abstracted from legendary tales, and then combined into a visual blend between story and my journey of truth. Re-contextualizing imagery recalls metaphors for the human condition. I am in constant search for the metaphor that identifies this condition.
My ideas dictate the direction of my process and the media that is incorporated in a work. Throughout my work, I am investigating our need to classify and the language of hierarchy. This structural order of categorizing becomes a catalyst in seducing us. Every being and every thing whether it appears in a story or reality maintains a status level, some deemed of more value or importance than others. The power these subjects reveal is seductive to all participants involved in the language game. I am intrigued by the allusiveness that seduction possesses; its ambiguity and capricious nature that allows for a constant veiling and unveiling between subject and the power of seduction.
The still life is an important element in my work and the collection. It becomes a manipulator of time, caught in the missing dimension. As collector and artist of the still life, the collection itself contains stages between life and death, where anxiety meets desire and seduction is affirmed.
Research validates the narrative portrayed in my work, while once living organisms, such as insects, plants and bones serve as tangible reinforcement to the tale.
My moth work is an exhibition entitled, The Miller Family Story. It is an investigation into the order of Lepidoptera through myth and science. This work draws inspiration from such cultural influences as; Vanilla Sky, Caveman's Valentine, Mothman Prophecies, Alice and Wonderland and Rumpelstiltskin amongst others. Throughout the work, references and quotes have been abstracted from these various cultural influences. Each work contains portions of these phrases along with scientific notation and my own writings. My discovery through this work is that a culture is created and survives on the interweaving of both myth and science.
My current work continues to combine the found object, once occupied by life with a two-dimensional reflection of time and culture. Each piece acts as a reliquary that assists in my journey interpreting the purpose of life....