I recently exhibited seven new paintings in my studio. I took inspiration from a roadside memorial I found on the street.
Last year I ran across a homemade shrine on the sidewalk near my studio. It was made up of an empty bottle of liquor, roses, coins, and a decapitated bird arranged in a plastic dish.
For a while this memorial marked someone's pathway out of this world. It held the aura of that transition for a while, until eventually it too transformed, from a sacred object into garbage. I came across it somewhere in between the two.
I was intrigued by the expression of deep feeling from such a humble platform, and charmed by the amateur attempt to communicate with a world beyond our own.
I began learning about roadside memorials around the country, and used some of them as inspirations for these paintings.
