Disgust

During the time of my Mother's illness and death from cancer I investigated the subject of disgust. Essentially, I was moved by the fact that I had spent the years from adolescence to the present holding an inarticulate sense of disgust concerning my mother. The twist was, now that she was dying and her body was, in fact, disgusting; I was coming to acceptance and love for her. I became interested in disgust as a rite of passage, disgust as an experience central to adolescence but oftentimes undone by maturity and acceptance. I was interested in the need to engage that which I considered disgusting in order to approach transcendence. It was during this time that my paintings emptied out. The paintings went from a process of image by excavation, a la DeKooning or Bill Jensen, and moved towards a method of image by clear conceptual process.