Suspended Narratives
Patience Is a Virtue is a diptych that has evolved through multiple iterations, accumulating a history of revisions, interruptions, and rediscoveries. I’m drawn to the visible history embedded within a painting, the traces of earlier compositions and the unexpected possibilities that emerge when a work is reworked over time. This piece began as one painting, sat unfinished for an extended period, and eventually transformed into its present form.
The work embraces a dark, gritty, and mysterious atmosphere, with surreal qualities that shift through the unconventional arrangement of its two panels. The smaller panel can be hung crooked, ajar, or upside down, introducing an element of instability and disrupting the viewer’s expectations of orientation. When displayed with its accompanying felt circus flags, the composition takes on an additional sense of weightlessness, as though its elements are suspended in space and quietly defying gravity. (This also bothers the hell out of some people, and I enjoy that)
I’m particularly drawn to the tension between the painting’s dramatic imagery and its playful, almost theatrical possibilities. Through accumulated surface history, unconventional installation, and the freedom to alter the relationship between the panels, Patience Is a Virtue remains an evolving composition—one that invites uncertainty, experimentation, and multiple interpretations.