Burnt Offering Landscape
In these wood assemblage works, I layer imagery together to juxtapose abstract pattern-based abstraction with images of landscapes that I think of as quotations. The images are created with a combination of drawing with both a wood-burning tool and an engraving tool to create a range of values. The landscapes depicted are from memory, either of places I have spent time in, or of landscapes depicted by other artists. These are spaces that resonate with meaning both on their own terms, and within the human experience of them. In these works, the landscape resides within a dream space, where accumulated marks create an opening or curtain beyond which the viewer is invited.
A burnt offering is an ancient symbolic Jewish rite of offering up some valued material - in the historic tradition, an animal whose body would have otherwise provided food, warmth, and light. It contains the sense of awe and fear that comes from confronting what is larger than ourselves. But in the face of this fear, we celebrate our relationship to the world and all that is holy in it.
The burning of wood to create an image in these works evokes the burning of an offering, but in this case results in a lasting image and not just ash. The image contains resonance between landscape and the body, echoing between patterns of movement like grass, wind, ripples in water, and patterns of growth like muscle, hair, and bone.