REMNANT SERIES: 2018

This new mixed media work is made from dried acrylic paint scraped from my palette. As a teenager my best friend and I would sometimes sneak cigarettes on the side of the house, near the garage where I had my easel set up. She would occasionally stand there and peel the dried paint off. After she died unexpectedly in 2007, every memory I had of her became precious. I started scraping the paint off of my palette ten years ago because it reminded me of her. Cleaning my palette at the start of each day became part of my studio routine. It still is. 

Sometimes there were beautiful, accidental fragments of dried paint. I started saving the pretty pieces at first. Eventually I saved them all and put the scraps in a tall, clear box. And then another box. And another box… After a year, I saw miniature versions of my paintings reduced to layered scraps of paint: 365 days of work and emotion and happiness and sadness and everything in between all neatly condensed in a box.

It took me over a decade of saving peeled paint to figure out what to do with the scraps. Recently I sorted them by color. Eventually I cast them in resin. These “three dimensional” paintings can be displayed in any direction (hanging on a wall or horizontally on a shelf) as each side provides a different but beautiful view.

The concept of this series is about memory and time. As it has expanded, I have incorporated larger formats and maps from my personal collection of places I have lived or visited. Maps tell us where we are going, where we have gone, or where we can go; they are the past, present and future on paper. When cast in resin, the map is still recognizable (even though certain areas are not visible), and everything becomes compressed: our nostalgia, emotions and memories are neatly reduced to a few square inches.