Maelstrøm

The images in this collection are part of a broader, personal journey … they form a fragmentary narrative woven together from various bits and pieces of my dreamworld … they are a kind of conceptual-symbolic documentation of my inner life.

I live with a chronic, often very difficult illness. As I grow older, I ought to find myself “improved,” more experienced, confident, wiser, etc. Instead, I grow weary and weak, drained, ever less assured, ever more hesitant. These feelings carry over into the night, where they disrupt my sleep and disturb my dreams. These emotional states often have a distinct visual flavour, and this project is largely an effort to interpret and to externalize the images that come at me, absent rational form, seemingly out of nowhere. ... This is my way of processing feelings of self-loss, atrophy, and fear … but also, on a more positive note, these images reflect a simple recognition of life change, a statement of hope, and an expression of gratitude.

As they’re broadly in the vein of surrealism, these images are ambiguous and obscure as to their ultimate meaning, which is to say they’re open to a wide range of interpretations and my hope is they’ll have broad resonance.

Most of these images were created over the course of the past two years, with the generous help and collaboration with friends, family, models and dancers.