The figures in my photo constructions, often solitary, express the isolation, longing, entrapment, and disconnection endemic in our current lives. Nevertheless, a slash of light through a portal can offer a measure of hope.
My most recent images were created during the anxiety and isolation period of the global pandemic. They expand on the noir tradition of looking at what lies beneath the illusory, sunny narrative of American life and 'domestic tranquility’.
I have long been drawn to and inspired by artists and art forms that evoke solitude, mystery, or self-reflection through color, chiaroscuro, and geometry. I pay particular homage to the patterns and abstractions of the mid-century American painter Edward Hopper, whose solitary figures seem absorbed in their interior lives; to the 17th-century Masters of northern Europe, who used light to evoke emotion; the muted paintings of Wilhelm Hammershøi, the narrative stills of Gregory Crewdson, and to the foreboding sparseness, alienated protagonists, and stylization of noir cinematography.
