Pareidolia (Looking for Connection)

Some find compartmentalizing useful. I find compartmentalizing behavior challenging. An abstraction, a portrait, a landscape, all are paintings made by me. A painting spun around or placed on the ground can reorient the whole picture, generate new thoughts or get placed in a different category. The paintings offer an investigation. I often look to others, whether paintings or people, as buoys while navigating life’s decisions.

Why the(se) choice(s)? The choices are edits in communication, filled with memories, embodying feelings, exchanging parts of themselves, reflecting the past. and (in)forming future decisions. The work spans times, moods, movements and challenges. 

This is a show of faces, some picture people, resembling features, filled with references, subjective feelings, relational aesthetics with a familiar touch. Similar characteristics are displayed in the compositions. Landscapes have eyes, noses, expressions. Faces dissolve and reform in painted material. The pictures gaze out at us and one another. They too search for order, something to hold onto. The term Pareidolia describes the tendency to see recognizable images in seemingly random natural occurrences, or a misperception of ambiguous stimuli seen as meaningful. These paintings are (mis)perceptions looking about ready to engage.

Still thinking of those not here. I always imagine about what is left out, regrettably. I would like to paint you and you and you and that and that and that. The subjectivity in my desire limits the dialogue. The edits highlight shortcomings in communication.

It's like playing with dolls, toy soldiers, hand puppets.

Can you hear the voices inhabiting these paintings? Do they communicate?