Your Warm Embrace, 2021

Semi-transparent tape on panel, 12" x 12" x 1.5"

Courtesy of the artist and Hang Art Gallery

I work in a mode of geometric abstraction infused with interests that are social and spiritual, emotional rather than rational, and concern bodies not platonic forms. My work combines an emphasis on opticality and color relativity with an interest in present-moment awareness developed through meditation practice. I aim for compositions that activate the eye and reward sustained viewing with unfolding internal dynamism and the emergence of shifting patterns and color relationships. In this way I invite the viewer to see themselves seeing - and feeling-thinking-being. My goal is for the work to open contemplative visual spaces that are a resource for inner life and being in the world.

This piece was made a year into the pandemic, when my work was layered with reflections on optimism, the challenges of isolation, and supports for joy-vitality-aliveness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions about composition - especially spacing, but also shape, points of contact and relation - felt imbued with added significance when making work during this time, even though that significance was not something that translated directly or prescriptively. In the end, Your Warm Embrace was one of a number of varied and exploratory forms reflecting a web of thoughts connected to sustaining optimism and joy under challenging circumstances and my abiding desire to do so.