THE PERMEABLE BODY, 2026
Our sense of self depends on seeing the body and identity as being independent and in some ways inviolable. Our daily actions are thought to be in service of this self and walled off from those around us. And yet our bodies are also open to the world through the air we breathe and the food and water we consume as well as being exposed to the many risks of our environment. In turn, we affect that environment and everyone that lives in it through our acts of consumption and generation of waste. We are both individuated and communal, but often blinded to the many connections we have to everything around us.
This series of works depicts the body as an entity both distinct from its environment and deeply integrated with it. The figure in these paintings is readable but often interrupted and subsumed into the pictorial matrix of other compositional elements. The primacy of the human form, as described over centuries of narrative figurative art, is interrogated, permeated and often overwhelmed. The distinction between figure and ground, which supports the notion of an independent identity, is disrupted and ambiguated. The goal of these paintings is to endorse human agency while constructing forceful pictorial reminders of our connection and interdependence.
