Lately I have been thinking about how to talk about my work and mulling over the idea of memorial. Just a few minutes ago, I found an entry from an old journal written on Easter Sunday 2008. At the top of the page is a question- I am not sure if someone actually asked that of me, or I was posing the question to myself.
-Is your work a form of therapy?
During the 90s I produced work that was about what I was feeling-symbolic pictures of struggle, sadness-but they were vague and unformed, generic. To develop further meant I needed to discover what these feelings were about, and for me that involved a personal and educational journey, not an artistic one.
Even though my work conveys feeling, Art is not a form of catharsis for me. I need to rationally come to terms with my emotions in order to make art .
-Is it a form of self expression?
Because what I lived through with my dad is entwined with my mind and feeling, because my intellectual and emotional development was affected, this art is an expression of who I am even though the work is also about the lives of others. I think it is more an act of remembrance. My work takes what I deeply feel about war and holocaust and gives it shape, form and context, like a memorial does but in drawing rather than sculpture or architecture.
