Description

My images respond to a wide range of art historical and personal references, and reflect on past and recent events. These silhouettes depict one or more figures, their attitudes and relationships. Each character is drawn from my own body. Like an actor playing all the roles in a theatre production or silent movie, I embody people I have observed and inhabit their intimate postures. This is my way of getting into a story that is all around me, yet still mysterious.

I was raised in post-World War II Germany. When I think back to my childhood, I remember a time when the past was not to be spoken about. I still find myself left to make up my own versions of events. I believe in making silence visible in my work.

After drawing the outlines, I print the figures by hand as stark, solid forms, making them plastic and immediate. The images fall into place through interplay of line, body, surface. For me, they allude to the German figurative tradition and the deep shadows cast by the Southern Californian sun. The background remains unspecific with space for the imagination, offering the characters up to dialog with the viewer in a theatre of shadows.

For Space4Art – Convergence, I am drawing from a model for the first time, and working in a large-sized, site-specific format.