The Tarot Project
While I love the experience of abstracting from observation, I am also curious about symbols and chance operations. In my tarot paintings, I investigate the intersection of a symbolic system, with the random luck of drawing a card from a shuffled deck. The strict symbolic language of the cards is energized by every shuffle of the deck.
I think of this project as a visual vocabulary as well as a machine for creating unplanned combinations. It helps me to create art from a starting place similar to the way that life throws unlikely and unexpected circumstances at us.
I have painted the 78 cards at least three times. Each card represents a concept such as “the staleness that results from an overly structured personality” or “industriousness and creative production”. The suits are individually represented by different palettes, shapes, and styles of mark-making. The Major Arcana cards [“The Lovers”, “The Fool”, etc.] do not fall into suits and so their colors are more varied. I created a collaborative performance piece to inspire the court cards (king, queen, knight and page). For more on that project, visit “The Reading”.
Ace to ten in four suits. These forty cards are a portion of my original deck.
Work With Words
At times, working with imagery developed in the Tarot series, I like to include short words or phrases to the paintings. These pieces point more specifically to themes I am considering in the paintings. For instance, “Ego is Not the Only Light” is a phrase I have returned to in several pieces following an investigation of the “Wheel of Fortune” card in combination with “The Hermit” card.