My present body of work involves the creation of images that respond to my childhood experience of apocalyptic stories. These biblical myths, told to me by my mother and interpreted by me as a child, persistently appear, sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously, in my recent work. The paintings and drawings I produce are a visual record of my social, political and religious interpretations of the apocalypse, using the landscape as a stage to create the narratives or metaphor’s expressing these ideas.
As I question the dogma of my youth, my own interests in geological studies and philosophy begin to deeply influence my personal view of the world and beyond. I look for contradictions and parallels within the ideological constructs of geological time and God’s time and apply these notions to my creative process. I conceptualize the geological landscape as a stage for historical narratives from the past, as well as fictitious visions of the future. We live our lives through our interaction to the landscape, how we walk through the world, the way we do or do not respect it; it is where we organize the whole of our existence. It seemed obvious to me that I might convey a message in a landscape format or with recognizable imagery taken from our current landscape. By using symbols, cultural icons or even everyday objects from the landscape I encourage the viewer to have all kinds of associations to these objects within a painting that can subtly guide the viewer toward a narrative or message.
In my current work, I have broken my interests down into four categories of apocalypse: historical, future, ecological, and personal. These possibilities have inspired many of my paintings and driven much of my research. The overarching theme of apocalypse (from the Greek word Apokalypsis, meaning ‘to unveil’ or ‘to reveal’) has allowed me to reconnect with my youth and my heritage and has driven me to articulate more clearly my own perspective regarding the future and what it will ‘reveal’ to us. Mythos is defined as the interrelated set of beliefs, attitudes, and values held by a society or cultural group. I believe mythos regarding apocalypse is chiefly born out of a fear of death; however, anything that requires abundant faith may also have the power to manifest itself as a psychological reality. This current work is The Mythos for the Mortal, my visual interpretations of apocalyptic mythos—past, present, and future.