Portraits

( 1997 – 2000 )

After painting abstractly on Braille paper for a dozen years, I began to combine photographic  portraits with painted depictions of identification systems, such as an individual’s fingerprints, texts, or Braille-coded lists of the sitter’s distinguishing characteristics.  This portrait series, which I titled vital statistics, led to larger works that juxtaposed a photographic portrait of a sitter with overlays of identity markers and texts from literature about the nature of perception.  At One Extreme, for example, meshes my self-portrait, my fingerprint pattern, and a Braille version of a passage from Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which I think neatly summarizes the artist’s dilemma between depicting perceived reality or recording internal perceptions and responses to that reality.  Diptychs from the TouchUntouch series depict individual and couples who present their raised hands to the camera as if leaving an imprint upon the atmosphere, the painted residue of their fingerprints an indication of the delicate nature of our impact upon the world and each other.