Stories of Heavenly F.

I comment in the 4 large paintings on falls within the context of our current time. The paintings address themes of influential isms of our times. I view after-effects of falls as liberating and enlightening and not petrified and shameful. To fall is human. I have experienced that failures bring forth abilities to withstand inevitable shadowy decay and gloomy destruction in one’s life. Falls are appeals and challenges to live one’s life. However, what one does not confront within oneself, fate arranges that to be met in one’s outer life. 

I painted babies from my experiences of obstetric care over 2 decades. Observing a newborn infant as it breathes air for the first time felt like a kiss from the divine. Holding to hand it for the mother’s very first embrace was another birth in itself. The pain of confinement was forgotten as the immediacy of life suddenly overwhelmed. A new abandon had commenced. 

The simple palette for the paintings is a deliberate choice to contrast implied racism in our contemporary times. Privilege, power, and entitlements are still based on racial prejudice, even very present in the medical communities of our times. My paintings comment on this bias in calculated ways.  

With paintings, I find portals to create a language of colour and forms about the content of a personal dream. The images are physical forms of human and animal, but done with accident and chance. I shy away from the illustrative, but hold on to irrational mark makings. The painted images are imaginary and invite curiosity. The moods of the paintings are melancholic and eery. The images are dualities and not merely emotions painted out as abstractions. The paintings as a gestalt are a deeply subjective perspective of the dream experience. No logical answers are given to answer what the dream means. Questions remain. 

The vaguely palpable bodies wish to speak, almost touch, if at all. 

I explore how the experiences of being human is felt within a physical body that is made from dust, dirt, and mud. The human body changes as the biological machine is under continuous threats of aging, decay, and microbes. My physical body is the template for my emotional life. My physical body is the unconscious of what I become aware of. The care for my body requires sustenance, hydration, sex, and sleep. Slowly my body suffers many little deaths every day.