Archives, slides containing specimens for examination, traces of past events, packaging, letters, envelopes, and sealing wax to ensure security are the dominant material of this work. They are combined on panels that once held an earlier painting, but that has since been erased. Together they form a composition that explores transparency, intimacy, and traces of life. In many ways, these works are a visual letter that exists in a state partially opened and partially still hidden within an envelope. They are a way of communicating a set of personal circumstances via the format of a painting while also choosing to work largely within the realm of collage. Paint, itself, has largely been used only as a binding agent that holds all the artifacts together. At the same time, through interacting with string and appearing in some cases to take the form of a wax seal, paint still is engaged in a representational function while also exploring the relationship between abstraction and representation. In many ways, this series of work lays the groundwork for the much more expansive 008.
