ARTIST STATEMENT:


The drawings I completed in 2011 are about confronting unseen tensions, grouped in three categories:

-Contemplation � tension within an environment (Umwelt);

-Wrestling � tension within oneself (Innenwelt);

-Ethics � tension with other people.

The primary genre is self-portraiture, however, I see myself merely as a performer in these drawings. I am playing a passive role, like the artwork itself, vulnerable to the critique of an anonymous audience. I am not seeking a solution to relieve the tension in each drawing; on the contrary, I am deliberately placing myself in a position susceptible to the harm inflicted by a judgments from the both Innenwelt and Umwelt. I become an art critic before the artwork is complete, empowered to speak and authorized to silence what is not yet said. Unlike the paintings prior to 2011, I am no longer hiding behind a detached veil of abstraction, instead I am revealing my insecurities, my faults, my fears, and myself in an honest representation. In these drawings the brush marks, drips, and washes become my body - I become the art.

In a self-portrait, I become the subject and object. Taking cues from Jacques Lacan�s �Mirror Stage� I am taking possession of my own reflection, I see it as an object, as Other and as Self. It is in this overlapping that a space opens where I am free. In this freeplay (Spielraum or enjeu) I am able to touch the surface where the visible meets the invisible; mark the place where the seer becomes the seen. Furthermore, I am influenced by Emmanuel L�vinas� ethics, where the passivity of standing face-to-face with

the other is a combination of resistance and defenselessness. Positioning this ethical approach as �the mirror up to nature� is the source of my inspiration and simultaneously the origin of the unseen tensions.

Identifying these unseen tensions between Environments, Others and Self was a direct result of the Public Portrait Project, 2011 that took place in Bonn, Germany (July 18 � 22, 2011). As a stranger

in a new city, I offered free portraits to people passing through the town square who were willing to sit for a 10-minute sketch. The action was presented as a thank you gift for the citizens of Bonn who had been very welcoming. Through this benevolent gesture it became clear to me that my conversations and the interactions in that public space became the subject more than the drawing of an anonymous person. Revealing an invisible subject made me think about the role art plays in a world dominated by media and entertainment thus provoking my responsibility as an artist to be a better mirror.