Artist's Statement, Spectre of War
Alarmed by the continued deterioration of relations between the US and Russia I have begun a new series which deals with my feelings about war in general, nuclear war in particular. I was a six year old child when the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted. I remember doing air raid drills but they were the kind designed to help one survive a conventional bombing. One sat with one's back to the wall , put one's face on one's knees and protected the back of one's head with one's hands. I had seen the pictures of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in the Encyclopedia. I knew the adults were lying to themselves and us, pretending survival was likely. I guess you could say it was the end of my innocence. These artworks offer no answers. They simply bear witness to a fear that probably hovers at the back of most people's minds. The exact interpretation of each piece is up to the the viewer. These digital works actually began as watercolor figure studies which I photographed and manipulated on the computer to the point of being unrecognizable, combining them with other elements, such as uncopyrighted US government photos of nuclear explosions and various weapons as well photographs of children's toys I took myself. The digital prints are NOT Giclees in the pejorative sense of being simply copies of a digitized photograph of an artwork done in conventional media. I have actively manipulated the images in the computer adding and subtracting elements, layering images on top of one another, moving them around and manipulating colors, textures and values.
|
||||