"In Transit"
This series of paintings is a reaction to the transitory nature of life as symbolized by everyday things we own and use and take for granted. Objects we value today may have no relevance at all for us by tomorrow.
I can trace the beginning of this series to the day my cousin called and asked if I wanted some of our grandmother's old things that he had in a storage unit. One of the items was a parlor chair that I remembered in particular from my grandmother's house because it had a yellow needlepoint cushion cover that she had made before her hands became crippled with arthritis and was very proud of.
Not very long after that we happened by an "antiques" sale at the old lima bean processing warehouse, a giant old corrugated steel building that sits out in the fields near town. Inside was dimly lit and stuffed full of random pieces of old furniture, all covered with a thick layer of dust and grime. It was too difficult to navigate the mess and we didn't buy anything. But there was one section that made a particular impression on me, a dark area filled with rows and rows of old abandoned chairs, stacked willy-nilly, coated with dust, disappearing off into the darkness. Some of those chairs had perhaps once been the prized possessions of people who were now dead, long gone, their lives forgotten.
It is funny how certain things can burn themselves into your consciousness at certain times without your really being aware of it until later. The shapes of chairs sort of snuck up on me and I suddenly started noticing them everywhere. They were there on the curb waiting for the trash truck, forgotten on the beach with the tide rising or carelessly gathered around a table after a party. They soon began appearing in my drawings and from there onto my canvases. I had to figure out why the sight of them made my heart turn over. Furniture abandoned and falling away into disintegration seems to me to particularly symbolize loss, the transient nature of life and the fleeting, sometimes fickle value we place on the objects we own and use--- and so often on people as well.
