18 September 2025
Blot: began from archived 50s American home movie footage of two teenage boys throwing another boy in a lake. A step forward, I think, in allowing space for the subject to unmoor from its source via the materials, because the execution of the scene in loosely-handled watercolor created something much more visually interesting than the original sequence of screenshots. But visually interesting isn't the main priority, so I have been thinking much more about my sources, wondering how and why I have moved away from my own documentation and/or family archives in the first place. Regardless, I think it is time to return to them, because having turned away from them has, in my view, tinged some (not all) of my recent work with a bit of self-consciousness, which is off-putting for me. But is an important misstep that had to be taken, because I can sense something real cohering now in the space where the intentionality and delicacy of the thin stains/washes on wood technique I'm developing has a chance to meet the excavation instincts that sent me down this path almost five years ago.