I want to imply the existence of the “other;” the psychological and cultural familiarity is presented as strange and foreign. The choice to make portraits of the puppets is therefore based on metaphysical and symbolic weight. I am interested in the dichotomies of absence and presence, and solidity and the ephemeral. The puppets of course are only illusions to narrative and to human psychology, but in my paintings, the puppets are given physical weight and psychological depth. The puppets are in essence structures of absences in which the human presence is made real through a performance of a psychology made present through the painting of the puppet’s portrait, and the light that is the ambience of the visual experience. Paul de Man in discussing Baudelaire in an essay entitled “Anthropomorphism and Trope in the Lyric,” writes, “The metaphoric crossing between perception and hallucination occurs by means of the paraphernalia of painting, which is also that of recollection and re-cognition, as the recovery, to the senses, of what seemed to be forever beyond experience.” Painting is the vehicle in which the puppet embodies a subjective narrative and ultimately a subjective reality; it allows a dialogue to occur between the viewer and the painting, and the painting and the imagined history of culture and identity, while embodying narratives that are beyond experience.
