Artist Statement
My work is about the language of patterning and how it relates to culture. My paintings reflect the cross-cultural experience of being an “other”. As a Jewish American, my culture’s history is layered and cryptic. Over millennia, Jews were forced to hide our identity and acculturate to survive or face death or expulsion. For me, non-representational abstraction provides anonymity. I make myself visible through intricate patterns and arrangements. This language offers a codified expression of my ideas and experiences in the world.
My paintings are composed in a grid structure which mirrors itself bilaterally. With my compositions intact, I intuitively paint geometric shapes, each one informing the others. These forms are stand-ins for cultures which are both symbolic and ambiguous. Shapes and colors do not correspond to physical characteristics of racial categories but are metaphors for different groups relating and intersecting. Collectively, these elements create rich flat layered worlds. I paint these imagined worlds on fabric because of its interwoven nature.
By seeking to reconcile my people’s own fractured diasporic history, I find resolution bringing people of different backgrounds into one whole through my work. These are my utopian worlds. Combining disparate shapes and patterns, I express how various cultural groups relate peacefully. By composing a harmonious interconnected design, I offer moments of reflection and messages of cross-cultural coexistence.