A SERIES OF CONFRONTATIONS WITH DEATH AND THE SEA:

These paintings are titled confrontations because I saw them as effigies. Stand-ins for more grandiose topics that require a kind of personal confrontation—such as mortality. The impetus for the series came from a desire to learn about the call of the void and a desire to understand the cost of answering that call—through the lens of cave diving accidents. I also examined Terror Management Theory, Mortality Salience, and Aesthetic Theory as contributing informants. Dying at the bottom of the ocean was a subject matter I found personally terrifying I chose to use that intense feeling as guide in my artistic practice. My research led me to creating this specific series of abstractions in an effort to replicate an aesthetic emotion I would call ‘ambient danger’. I imagine it as standing in front of the mouth of a cave where you know many have perished.