“ALL OF THE GIFTS I WANTED TO GIVE YOU” is a collection of oil paintings on small (4”x4”x1.5” and 12”x12”x1.5”) wooden blocks. The work’s palette is comprised of only two colors, titanium white and ultramarine, as well as trace elements of graphite ... creating a monochrome effect reminiscent of Delftware or 18th century Chinese export porcelain. Even within these narrow parameters, the range of stylistic and conceptual possibilities is enormous.
“GIFTS” functions as a modular self-portrait, a constellation of memories and ideas. The subject matter is as varied as the techniques employed. Aesthetic motifs borrowed from the Rococo and Baroque are joined with anatomical diagrams, architectural elements, historic costumes, monsters, and evocative abstractions. Fuzzy childhood scenes are contrasted with stark modernist reflections, familiar movie sets are blurred and distorted into surreal dreamscapes, iconographies are fractured and recombined.
The Portuguese word “saudade” describes a warming sort of melancholy, a nostalgic yearning for what once was, or what could have been. This work, “ALL OF THE GIFTS I WANTED TO GIVE YOU”, is an aggregate essay in saudade; these are all gifts that I had once hoped to give, but for one reason or another their intended recipients never saw them. Catalogued here are the most intimate parts of myself … my talents, my hopes, my fears … the choicest cuts I could possibly place before a lover or an industry or a community. After a change in my fortunes, the work has become an examination of longing itself.
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