Exhibition -

El Dorado is the beginning of a new series of drawings and paintings.

Like my ongoing series Purgastoria, begun in 2004, El Dorado will be developed into book form.

But El Dorado represents a thematic shift from Purgastoria, with its theme of mortality: El Dorado is about love, salvation and transformation.

The El Dorado images riff off the tradition of heroic narratives in Western literature, and incorporate elements from the cowboy comics I read as a kid, allowing, as well, greater freedom in composition and sequencing images. This project is inspired by my recent travels in New Mexico and California; a cowboy story by Janette Platana called How it Is; and by Western films both recent and past.

El Dorado is the lost City of Gold, the thing that is sought endlessly but which may not be found or even exist, like true love, heaven, happiness, success. In this series of drawings and paintings, one cowboy saves another from drowning, initiating a tender companionship. As they set out on their wanderings they encounter a wolf costumed as a rabbit, a hanged man who returns from the dead, and a murder of shape-shifting crows. The nature of the cowboys' quest remains mysterious, perhaps even to them, as do the intentions of the peculiar creatures they encounter.

Like much of my work, the proto-narrative is allowed to remain impenetrable, with the drawings working both in sequence and independently. In making the work, I scoop images from daily encounters, books I am reading, news clips, and the media. As images are folded into the world of the drawings, I try to decrypt and construct the logic of the pictures, without altogether needing to understand what the meaning of that logic is.

With this project, I am particularly interested in the fantasy of love as salvation. In E.M. Forester's novel, Maurice, the gentleman protagonist is transformed by his love for a stable boy. Their love liberates the gentleman from oppressive social and emotional mores. Late in life, Forester reflected on his youthful novel, confiding that he no longer felt that any one person, or love, could be a catalyst for this kind of transformation. So wolves, bunnies, crows, drowning, the desert, and disguises become the agents of metamorphosis for the cowboys who seek their own transformation, becoming their own City of Gold.

Upcoming: Purgastoria - Screen Prints at Open Studio, May 31 - June 23, 2007.
Artists' Talk at 6pm followed by opening reception :Thursday, May 31 7-9pm.