Breeze Blocks
Artist Statement
My practice is focused on exploring our connections to the ephemeral and the whimsical, and the idea of finding novelty, ambiguity, and awe in everyday life. In Breeze Blocks, I use the female form as symbols and as patterns, as well as the landscape and architecture of the West Coast to address the line between abstraction and representation through reflective and surreal vignettes.
The subjects of the work, minimal faceless women, are also used as the building blocks of patterns. The figures are faceless everywomen who exist at different times in solitude, in relationships, and in communities, but always in sublime and slightly ambiguous environments made up of simple symmetrical compositions, gradients, pattern, and harmonious color. Removing details such as facial features enables the figures to avoid specificity and identity, allowing them to become proxies for the viewer rather than objects of desire or subjects of the gaze.
The environments in these pieces are influenced by West Coast sunsets, particularly the light in Los Angeles, as well as the breeze blocks of mid-century modern architecture. Combining minimal patterns, gradients, and compositions, I seek to create artworks that encourage contemplation. By bringing patterns and repetition to the forefront and by stripping away details, I want to create idyllic environments and represent sublimity through color, simplicity, and repetition.
The pieces are executed in acrylic spray paint and silkscreen, which produces flat, graphic images without painterly traces. In this way, the focus stays on the conceptual and narrative elements of the work, rather than brush strokes or hand-painted linework. Silkscreening also allows the creation of multiples within and across different pieces, generating relationships and a sense of interchangeability while hinting at a narrative and flow between the individual pieces. But the narrative isn’t clear, and certainly doesn’t resolve itself, leaving the content up to the viewer.
