Reenchantment Series
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Grounded
watercolor and gouache on paper, 30" x 22", 2015
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Vital
watercolor and gouache on paper, 30" x 22", 2015
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Released
watercolor, gouache, and gold leaf on paper, 30" x 22", 2016
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Heart and Throat
watercolor, gouache, and gold leaf on paper, 30" x 22", 2016
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This Is Yours
watercolor, gouache, and gold leaf) on paper, 30" x 22", 2017
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Found
watercolor, gouache, and copper leaf on paper, 30" x 22", 2017
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Realized
watercolor, gouache, copper and gold leaf on paper, 30" x 22", 2018
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Projected
watercolor, gouache, silver and gold leaf on paper, 30" x 22", 2018
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Healing
watercolor, gouache, gold leaf, and egg tempera on paper, 30" x 22", 2019
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Noosphere
watercolor, gouache, gold and silver leaf, and egg tempera on paper, 30" x 22", 2020
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My most recent body of work, "The Reenchantment of Englewood and Beyond", consists of twelve paintings each 30" x 22" that make up a scroll type narrative. In this series I am depicting Harper High School students as they move throughout the streets and among the buildings walking, talking and interacting as young people do with energy and a wide range of emotions displayed and hidden. These are watercolor and gouache paintings with some gold, copper, and silver leaf. The paintings show a detailed and realistic scene with added and invented elements in order to tell a story beyond our current reality. I like the term "visionary realism" in describing this work.
These paintings respond to the hardships of life in urban black neighborhoods like Englewood. In Englewood in one year 29 current and recent Harper High School students were shot. As in other urban American neighborhoods, the murders, violence, despair, and fear exist there mingled with truth, beauty, joy, and trust just as darkness exists everywhere with light. I wanted to depict this neighborhood similarly to how Xu Yang detailed Chinese life during the 1750's in his scroll entitled "The Qianlong Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour" with a sweeping scope revealing the broad view of place coupled with the intimacy of human figures engaged in everyday activities and ritualistic scenes with careful detail. The emperor moves among the people in these paintings, on the same level plane, not upon a throne or at the top of a pyramid. The characters in "The Reenchantment of Englewood and Beyond" become aware of their power to tap into the presence of absolute love (already inside of them and always available) and use it to claim authority, freedom, and super powers. I represent the absolute with black spheres embellished with golden designs which hover behind trees, in the sky, and right in front of us. I use acryla-gouache and watercolor to paint the scenarios of my alternate reality with intricate details. In these carefully rendered amalgamations, the real and imagined intermingle.
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