descriptions | Images
Flowers Grow
Evisceration: to remove an essential part of something and so weaken it.
Regeneration: to replace lost tissue or a lost limb or organ with a new growth, or grow again after loss.
“Flowers Grow” is a series of 15” X 20” and 9” X 12” works on paper that I developed alongside “Amputees,” a body of wall hanging sculptures that serve as an abstract representation of the physical and emotional trauma of amputation. Given recent political events, I was thinking a great deal about contemporary warfare and violence, the relationship between destructive and creative energies, and processes of disintegration and regeneration.
Humans have an incredible ability to heal, to pick ourselves up and “move on.” The land is also resilient, sometimes being able to repair itself after destruction, even if over centuries. I was inspired by our ability, by the earth’s ability, to reemerge from what seem to be moments of finality. While preparing for the series, I spilled oil-based enamel directly onto sheets of paper. The resulting oil spills curled into formations reminiscent of human body parts. The enamel’s resiliency interested me as a kind of metaphor for the potential regenerative capacity of our bodies and our earth. Naturally, oil is also a focal metaphor for destruction and decline, for human thirst for expansion that seems simultaneously to nurture its own desire for restriction if not its own end.
