WATCH YOUR STEP | TDP GALLERY
MARCH 30 - MAY 6, 2017
Most of the work in this show was produced in early 2017, after the 2016 election and during the early weeks of the Trump Administration.
This has been a period of heavy media digestion for me – a time when I have become, for the first time in my life, immersed in politics, delivered through news organizations and social media. Concurrently with making many of the paintings in this show, I have closely followed cabinet appointments, state department intrigue, and the details of legislative processes. I’ve gotten to know my State Senator, and I have participated in protests of Trump’s immigration policies at Hartford’s Bradley Airport and of his treatment of women in Washington D.C. I’ve also been a part of an effort to resettle a refugee family, and gone through the angst of visa denial and the subsequent joy of welcoming a Syrian grandmother, mother, and daughter to my neighborhood after Judge James Robart’s brave ruling.
In addition, I’ve had a number of experiences I couldn’t have imagined a year ago: I’ve received a recruitment email from a white supremacist group hoping to build a presence on the college campus where I work. I’ve joined other concerned parents and staff at my son’s daycare at a Jewish Community Center to discuss an action plan in case of bomb threats. And I’ve listened to my Hispanic stepfather in New Mexico –a former director of a Los Alamos government laboratory who was under consideration for a cabinet appointment during the Reagan administration - express his anger about an impending “identity verification” visit from a Social Security agent.
Perhaps surprisingly, in the midst of all of this political activity- very new to me – I’ve only become more convinced about the value of painting practice. I’m grateful to radio host Caroline Casey for her reformulation of a Japanese Proverb: “artworks are the visible evidence of the artist’s invisible growth.” Abstract painting is about developing consciousness – that of the artist and of the culture that she is a part of. These paintings express (in my own painterly language) a jolt of awakening. They are signs: of caution, of warning, that danger might be ahead. They are meant to invoke the urgency of waking up and participating.