Artworks > (archive) SONOGRAM DRAWINGS (2004-2010)

Looking at a sonogram image can be like looking through a perforated screen. The image of a child may become perfectly clear in a moment, then lost in static in the next. Before my daughter was born her placenta partially detached form the uterus, and as a result many sonograms were made to monitor her progress. In response to these images I began a series of prints and drawings that explore this concept of thinking about the unknown while looking at coded or veiled information. In these works an equally familiar and confusing object is a surrogate for the pre-born child, and peripheral information seeks to attract a sense of context. In all of these images there is an interest in the absurd, the unnoticed, the unfathomable, and an unconscious wisdom.

This body of work is a re-investment in the process of drawing as thinking. With each of these images I try to generate questions instead of making statements. I try to work in a state that oscillates between resolving clarity of form and ambiguity of meaning. These drawings, etchings, and lithographs are achieved through layers of methodical marks, appropriated patterns, and veils of translucent color. In several of these prints I have collaborated by drawing the image with my daughter to introduce a dialog of different marks and unpredictability. The lithographs are also the raw source material for collages that aim to rethink or re-intuit the idea by recombining elements in provocative ways.