Ink on vellum
66 x 36 inches

CARDIAC HARMONIUM which is the name I give to the body of work I am engaged with currently, addresses the shared commonality of our internal organ systems so seldom considered. This multi channel and multi media work, began as a response to a cardiac event that I experienced two years ago. I began to think about the fragile connection of our hearts to our brains and how relatively little is known about this. I began to do videos and a series of paintings and ink drawings about the subject, primarily focusing on the image of the heart and incorporating my own sonograms and cells of my heart that I had asked the Doctors and hospital staff to give me.

As this work has developed over the last two years and as the conversation about our fragile identities as humans evolves in the political climate in ways terrifyingly similar to xenophobic “conversations” in the 1939s and throughout our human history, this work has become as much about our shared common organic systems and the enigma of what differentiates us as my personal journey.
Arteries and organs are the same within the bodies of all humans. What strikes me as enigmatic is how our DNA, our individual wiring can be so different. The direction of this work explores the way we perceive our bodies and the manner in which we fail to comprehend them. There’s a disconnect that comes from living with mod cons and technological Wizardry. I juxtapose hand drawn animations with medical imagery of my heart cells and from online sources that I alter. In the video arteries occasionally morph into tree branches. In the paintings, literally threads create an even more visceral and three-dimensional component to the fluid ink.