The works in this latest series bring focus to one of the key aspects of being human that I find compelling – the idea that we, as people, spend a lifetime working on our identity and yet it, like our bodies, is completely false. It is impermanent at its root, shifting and moving like the sands on a dune. We struggle with establishing a ‘self’ in such a way that we believe it has solidity and yet it doesn’t. The person we were at 4 or 12 or 36 is not really the person we are at any other time. Nonetheless we continue to grasp at it as if we could actually define it. In these works, the shifting of the portrait attempts to show how we as spectators can recognize others even as they disintegrate but the person whose portrait it is pulls away from it as being too uncertain. All these works are pastel, chalk and colored pencil on paper, mounted. All were created in 2012 and were first seen in the OMG exhibit at the Watchung Arts Center in that year. 
Not Here/There
