IMA*  

Pit fired ceramics  

This series is foremost, a meditative practice, an ongoing exercise in entropy and exchange. These objects are built through the process of rolling out each clay sheet by hand and foraging for found materials to impart them with pigment, that culminates in the act of burning. Each batch a new cycle of discovery. The resultant images both singular and part of a whole, are born out of these interactions between matter and flame; motion captured in a still. These paintings provide an escape into another world, somewhere both here and elsewhere, present and ancient, strange and familiar, images beyond representation.  

With many noteworthy connections across the humanities, this work draws influence from Zen ideals of restraint, fleeting experiences, organic processes and imperfection. It also draws influence from areas of new materialist ontologies, exploring the performative power that results when the engagement with materials, produces its own kind of sight, manifesting in unforeseen ways. 

These paintings also reference the expressive qualities of colour field abstract expressionists with a few fundamental differences. First, the gestures are not linked by spontaneity to the artist’s hand, but rather undergo a sort of automation, whereby only once the slate is relinquished into the flames, does it transform from object to painting. A second distinction is an intimately small scale and tile like dimensions, which are much more aligned with another field of inquiry, craft. This work exists in the interstice between these fields, having been made by hand, as well as by nature.  

*In my native tongue Hebrew, IMA is the common word for mother, whose etymology, in turn, branches out into the word matter; literally the origin from which something is made. This work is dedicated to my Ima.