My series “Veiled” began as a playful exploration of the boundaries between representation and abstraction.  At the outset, my process started with photographing sheets of tinfoil, molded and distorted, under different colored lights and then meticulously painting the resulting photos onto canvas. At that point the work transforms beyond its original form, loses its identity as a piece of tinfoil and becomes shapes and colors with which the viewer can engage abstractly.  Realistically representing unrecognizable subject matter in a traditional style imbues the finished paintings with a sense of mystery; the sensuous handling of paint makes them feel tangible to the viewer but their identities are veiled.

            I experiment with different ways of manipulating images, to further alter them, to further complicate their relation to the original, Platonic state of tinfoil. Each painting develops in a slightly different manner, each one uniquely transformed. . I am interested in how viewers and artists alike orient themselves within an image and engage with its composition. The latest evolution of this series warps the source photos to fit varied underlying geometrical structures configured using devices identified by Charles Bouleau in his book “The Painter’s Secret Geometry.” By dividing the edges of the painting’s rectangle into various geometrical proportions and then connecting those points across the canvas on diagonals, one can then arrange major shapes along these lines. These methods of composition provide a framework for the paintings, giving them a methodical and visually navigable composition.

            Through this strategic disengagement from tangible objects represented in a monumental, abstract manner and compositional manipulation I am investigating the ways in which one can be led by an image to follow it in a specific direction, investigating how one can be fooled about the true nature of an image, and how a subject can hold multiple identities in a single image, based on the way it is portrayed.