Geo-Portraits
Like portraits of people, these works depict physical geography in various ways. Sometimes I choose to represent the subject literally or objectively. In other instances, I portray a particular point of view, political agenda, or historical and cultural context.
In reality, lines on a map are just lines that frequently indicate little difference between sides and do not accurately reflect the people they separate or associate. Although we recognize the lines that define and divide people, we take liberty crossing in and out of them. A society’s appropriation of the Other—whether annexing territory or adopting popular cultural characteristics—represents this transgression of actual and symbolic boundaries.
I draw attention to the boundaries that appear to divide us from one another. Whether man-made or natural, political boundaries create emotional and psychological divisions as well as physical ones. In acknowledging these divisions, we too easily accept them as demarcations of differences between people. While I do not want to suggest that the world should be a homogenous entity exhibiting no differentiation between cultures, I do wish to call into question the divisiveness of our social practices. I also intend to point out the moveable aspect of our world’s partitions and the absurd nature of our continued misunderstanding as we perpetually carve up the globe.
Put simply, my paintings are abstractions of the physical world viewed from different perspectives as a means to examine current or past social and political situations. For example, I depict a war-torn land without its contested political boundaries (Holy Land); a border that divides land and people with a common history and way of life (Thar Desert); the setting of an historical event that had significant ramifications in the relations between Christians and Muslims (The Battle of Lepanto); and the post-9/11 renaming of three nations (”Atlas of Evil”).