Blending
of Body
and Soul

I would further this observation by stating Drawing is the lens par excellence enabling one to see more profoundly and record intimately the extend of this complexity.

This series of drawings has been inspired by and references questions that discomforted the conscientious 7th century monk, Saint John of Climax. In his manual The Ladder of Divine Ascent, St. John proposes self-restraining methods as a progression to a heighten state of ecstasy and godly purity. By existentially questioning his state of being for example, “How can I hate him whom by nature I habitually love” and “How can I get free of him with whom I am bound forever,” St. John expresses his turmoil. He configures an existential space where moral and sensuous dichotomies distract and co-exist between the sacred and the profane.

I am interested in revelling in this transformative space because it is a place equally familiar and unknown; a place of unfulfilled desire. It is rich with attributes of repentance, reverence, eroticism, and sublimation.

Through the process of blending pictorial descriptive and abstracted qualities—the body and the soul—I aim to elicit an arousing state where disorder and carnival enthusiasm clash all within the intimacy of drawing.