“The Speckled Band,” the last words from the lips of a dying woman, was not a sash of speckled fabric but a venomous snake.* Until the mystery is revealed in the Sherlock Holmes episode, the reader is forced to suspect all objects speckled and band like. My work is an exploration of excess and fear. My interest in these topics lies in the anthropomorphized power we are capable of projecting onto the things around us. In this work I gravitated toward decorative textiles like wall paper, eyelet lace, or gingham. I have a particular affinity to Victorian literature, and inversely horror novels and films. I am searching for commonalities between my ideas as a painter and the books and movies I seek out. I use symbols that trigger fears for me (for example an image of a snake). I then excessively embellish those symbols with traditional patterns, soft fabrics and lace, things I think are beautiful. The combination creates a sort of cross conduction of meaning, the lace becomes more menacing, and the snake takes on a more potent symbology . This combination of pleasure and fear, attraction and repulsion, create images that have certain brand titillating gorgeousness that exists in some of my favorite novels and films, fueling this exploration into whether or not it is possible to create a painting that indulges fears the way stories and films do.
*Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “The Speckled Band” (1892)