PAINTINGS

Every desert used to be an ocean

oil on canvas , 53” x 360”

My child, sleeping

Oil in canvas , 31” x 40”

Someone waiting for you

oil one canvas , 31” x 40”

That moment people come out of the terminal into the departures lounge. Intimate and powerful if you have someone waiting for you.

On E.

oil on canvas , 56” x 48”

Transitioning from voice to surface. I resonated E sound into painting, sitting in honesty with my voice, allowing myself to feel transcribed into colors and shapes.

I wonder where he his now

oil on canvas , 47” x 58”

If I imagined I was somewhere else and I was someone else, I would be that man in worn out corduroys and a flat cap, smoking a rollie under a canopy outside a cafe in North London. I'd read The Guardian and eat hash browns. There would be no social media, no internet radio and no e-commerce. No love bombing and no ghosting. Perhaps even no cell phones. It now seems utopian but it did exist once. I sat next to that man a few times, back when I lived in North London. I wonder where he is now.

War on Love

oil on canvas , 56” x 48”

Painted on the day the Dakota Pipeline protesters were under the impression they had won their case. I later used it as the cover of the Patti Yang Group album titled War On Love. It’s a symbolic dance of victory over imagined war, over perpetual assault on innocence that keeps on happening within us and around us.

Perfecting repetitive strains

oil on canvas , 47” x 58”

Falling over the same rock in the same place, yet each fall feels different. The learning curve of repetition. There is no such thing as perfect repetition.

The fear and the urge

oil on canvas , 99” x 44”

Sometimes I'd forget the lyrics in the middle of the show when I used to play live a lot (it happened halfway through the performance on tour). I suddenly couldn't remember where I was because I got happily lost in the moment. The fear and the urge to recalibrate that followed were devastatingly intense.

Walking with strangers

oil on canvas , 30” x 40”

I caught a glimpse of a stranger's eye. We will never see each other again. There is a micro exchange that was never intentional nor important. So many of those daily when you live surrounded by people. Bursts of random exchange.

I’ve never had a sister

oil on canvas , 98” x 44”

Sisterhood: connected, karmic, heavy, joyful. I've never had a sister.

States OF Enemy

2017 oil on canvas , 108” x 144"