Home Series

To view the com­plete gallery of images click on Home Series Gallery: “Nei­ther Here Nor There”.

The search for the mean­ing of “home”  has been an ongo­ing nar­ra­tive in my work for the past few years– not just the phys­i­cal sense of home but also a spir­i­tual and metaphor­i­cal search for home. The Instal­la­tion of Mem­o­ries of the For­est ties into this explo­ration as well the accom­pa­ny­ing Artist Book.

The juxa­po­si­tion­ing of mem­o­ries of a first gen­er­a­tion child of Holo­caust sur­vivors grow­ing up on the prairies has pro­vided me with a unique view on the world and is one that I explore in my titled Home Series: “Nei­ther Here Nor There”. In this series I reflect upon the ideas of mem­ory, home, exile, re-emergence/rebirth, and self identity.

How one’s iden­tity and home can be lost and be reborn in a new life is exam­ined in my instal­la­tion work, artist book and with the paint­ings in the Home Series. While one lives in the new world one can never really leave the old—memories how­ever frag­ile and ephemeral will always be on the periph­ery. Grow­ing up in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan with sto­ries and mem­o­ries of war and exile pro­vided me with a sense of two worlds.

The light­ness and opti­mism of the new world prairies is con­trasted in my work with under­tones of the old world in medium and in sub­ject mat­ter. Paint­ings are dig­i­tally col­laged with each other and con­verge together to sug­gest the nar­ra­tive con­cept of “nei­ther here nor there” (an old coun­try Yid­dish expres­sion).  Lives lived and faded mem­o­ries con­verge in time. A strik­ing con­trast of light and dark, opti­mism and pes­simism is con­sid­ered through the use of colour and media.

 

“Every day is a jour­ney and the jour­ney itself is home.” Mat­suo Basho Japan­ese Poet 1644–1694