Blood Drawings
Blood is a potent symbol. Our ancestors sacrificed blood and flesh to appease the gods. When we spill blood in our modern world, we take particular care in reverence to its power, arming ourselves with rubber gloves, germ-killing agents, and the like. Blood evokes an immediate, visceral response as nothing else may. And with good reason: it's the stuff we're made of.
I began this series as an exploration of map-making on the boundaries of reality and fantasy. The territories I map here are both internal and external. They reference an idealized topography of an imagined terrain, which is born only by my drawing--or your looking at--it. And they are maps of internal spaces: cels dividing endlessly and chaotically, cels sloughing off before you can try to measure them, all the strange processes of our bodies which medical science tries and often falls short of fully explaining. Finally, they are each a meditation. They carve out a quiet space for me in the endless chatter of our connected lives. The repeating patterns which suggest themselves to me in the impressions of dried blood are also a mantra of hope, a quest for discovery through contemplation. They map other possible worlds, the quantum universes next to ours that might spawn on the smallest turns of chance, and the landscapes of imagined other planets we could someday call home.
A note on process
These works begin with blood on paper. I often monoprint using a liver or heart directly on the page. Other times I dribble blood onto the page and let it pool or drip; I either leave it alone at this point or press a second sheet on top forming two blotted monoprints. The blood dries overnight. Then I draw on top as the patterns suggest themselves to me.