II From the Observatory of Empire State Building, Looking Down at NYC Painting

Visual Journaling: Documentation of an Aerial Map of Public and Personal Experience My paintings act as visual journals documenting the shift between realms of externality and interiority, as not only augmented by sense memories, but also transformed by internal philosophical reflection. This process incorporates a holistic approach of exploration to my creative work in and out of my studio practice for the purpose of bringing a greater awareness of self and humanity. My life journey started by alternating stays in Eastern Europe and America shaping my childhood years. The ground beneath my feet was constantly shifting, forcing me to cope with sudden rounds of confusion in which language and social structure totally subverted what I had just learned on the opposite side of the Atlantic. All my life I have struggled with the desire to reconcile these two worlds of experience. In painting, I have found a means, a process, to begin. This creative process provides me the with occasions to think, feel, and meditate, and embrace transformational experiences. Childhood/adulthood, external world/inner world, abstraction/representation, drawing/painting, one/other, urban/rural, nature/culture, image/text, negative/positive, mapping the oppositions in my work has brought an awareness of parts of a greater whole individually and collectively. As Claude Levi-Strauss stated in Structuralism and Ecology, "People think about the world in terms of binary opposites --- such as high and low, inside and outside, person and animal, life and death --- and that every culture can be understood in terms of these opposites. From the very start, the process of visual perception makes use of binary oppositions." Urban Aerial Views Around the World is a painting series based on photographs taken from various observational towers, in which I document site-specific locations that are then expressed through my emotive vocabulary. My editing process consists of sorting through hundreds of photographs while journaling my thoughts and emotions connected to my experiences of these travels. With Photoshop I modify the images with colors that best reflect my inner thoughts, feelings and meditational responses. When suitably transformed these images are translated onto paper or canvas using water-soluble wax pastels. Interference paint is added to symbolize the coloring of emotion on the act of introspection. This modern pigment has a uniquely elusive presence that literally appears and disappears depending on the position of the viewer in relation to the light source. Drawing and painting get combined in my process, seeking radical juxtaposition to create new meanings. Susan Sontag in Against Interpretation states, "There is a Surrealist tradition in the theater, in painting, in poetry, in the cinema, in music, and in the novel... The Surrealist tradition in all these arts is united by the idea of destroying conventional meanings, and creating new meanings or counter-meanings through radical juxtaposition (the 'collage principle').” Painting/journaling, and aerial mapping/documentation provides me with an authentic exploration of my travel experiences. Abstract Expressionism juxtaposed with Geometric Abstraction and Realism echoes in the background as I hold in mind the sense memories of deeply felt events and locations: living in Croatia, Hungary, and the United States, transcending the boundaries of nationalism and connected by identity to a global community. This shift between realms, augmented by sense memories and transformed by my personal artistic journey, becomes the basis for these pictorial constructions. This process provides a realm in which to think, feel and meditate, and has the potential to reconcile and transform all experiences

Painting:Acrylic on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:30 W x 44 H x 2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.