Untitled (although)
c. 1995, 2025
Photo emulsion, alkyd resin, wax, oil on canvas
14 × 20 in. (35.6 × 50.8 cm)
This painting was rediscovered while cleaning out my studio recently. It dates back to the 1990s, when I was experimenting with photo emulsions, resins, and wax. Encountering it again after decades in storage, I was unsure how to read it. I left it leaning against the wall while working on a new series concerned with gesture, marking, and expression as image. Around that time, I reread Oscar Wilde’s poem The Artist (1894), in which a sculptor melts down his own monument to sorrow in order to produce a fleeting image of pleasure. That act of destruction and transformation resonates here. The painting is both recovered and altered, negotiating between what persists and what exists only momentarily.