My
recent paintings are part of a continuing series. The focus of each piece in
the Radiumseries varies, however it revolves around the concept
of mapping stories. Stories and the way they become lost, hidden, changed
through time and forgotten. The artwork is composed from three main narrative
components. The first element is the Radium Girls’ experience. At the beginning
of the twentieth century young women were employed in factories to paint watch
dials and other instruments with radium-laced luminous paint.In the process, the women swallowed radium,
which produced negative effects on their health and in many cases, resulted in
their deaths.The second narrative
element comes from a trip to Poland, where I visited the home of Maria
Sklodowska-Curie, the woman who along with her husband discovered radium.And the third narrative component is informed
from the experience of my relatives, who made their livings working in
factories, as well as my own experience as a factory worker, making the inside
parts for pacemakers.
I layer my paintings with references to
literary, science, social theories, cultural icons, personal memories and
everyday occurrences in hopes of giving viewers the widest access to viewing my
work. Stories and myths tell us what is expected of us, they help us to
understand who we are and how to act and interact. The narrative stories that I
create combine the many truths and lies that are the keys to some of the
deepest levels of understanding.After
all in one way or another, stories deal with the most meaningful and basic life
processes.These paintings, drawings and
prints are partially told and evolving narratives.The image are suspended between certainty and
doubt, truth and lies, fact and fiction, color and the absence of it, and
between what is there and what is left out.Some of the images that recur in these stories are: monkeys/primates,
flowers, bones, beds, birds, crowns, radium bombs and scientific measuring instruments,
shoes, teeth and aprons.All of the
images are cross-fertilized from fragments of stories, experiences, life, death
and secrets to make up part of my visual narrative.
