My most recent work stems from fond memories of my childhood. My grandmother would sit my brothers and I down in front of a large felt storyboard. She would carefully lay out and illustrate great biblical narratives using flannel graph images. I was fascinated with the visual language that came through the characters she displayed. I was intrigued by the process of how a simple vacant color board could evolve into a story by the simple addition of a flannel character. The flat green felt came alive when the shepherd boy David was fixed awkwardly to one side. The room would explode as Goliath entered and the tension between the two characters would now define an implied space. The dialogue between the two would evoke the imagination into placing the armies of both Israel and the Philistines into the surrounding area. I could hear the roar, the cheers, the clash of one of the greatest stories in history and yet I had not left the room. Through my grandmothers storytelling, the juxtaposition of images, and more importantly to me, what was implied by the images, she would create a jouney for the imagination; a portal into great narratives of the past.
I am fascinated by what is implied by an image, especially when it is juxtaposed to other symbols or representations. My work is a dialogue of sorts between visual symbols and the implied meaning inherent to that visual image. The hope is to evoke connections to ideas, thoughts, contexts, concepts, emotions and even fantasies through this symbolic abstraction. Absent are any overt references to a narrative story in order to allow for the window of the imagination to open and the winds of discourse to flow freely.