The physical work of creating this painting spans roughly four years of my life. The image of me in the lower right with my felt hat, mexican sweater, and plywood cut out of a Davie Crocket musket goes back to age three. The stories i have about myself and my family, my brothers and who i am in this world has been retold and retold. The striated bubbles that lead up the left side of the canvas is another depiction of the same idea. There are these intense moments of connection where deliberately words are repeted. The images have changed many times as I rework and try to follow the emotional impact of things that have happened to me. It is not a way to find the facts of history. It allows me to see how those things impacted me. Circles that form a sense of receding space. Thought bubbles overlaying each other containing almost the same retellings of the situation that has been isolated or forgotten from the flow of our experience. Certain moments get held onto with a tightness that is rarely forgiving. The retelling of these stories comes to define how we are seen. I look at the images of naked women with birds flying from where a head should be and the corresponding smaller colder shadow of a torso., Silhouettes of American cowboys, and toy lions. I do not want to understand what my work is about but instead to come to a place of realization that a discussion of engaging in a more informed way is possible. What is my story? What am committing to memory about my own identity? How does the past continue to influence me today? What is there in the shadows whispering to me? What was it like to play Davey Crocket as a two year old with my older brother? Where are the lady's heads?
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