Collage & Mixed Media

Collage and mixed media speak to the complexities and layered history of a region I was born into. As an immigrant, I am still haunted by the Middle-East and the scars of war. I research and record, eager to reconstruct my stratified identity: highlighting the painful and preserving the beautiful.

The work is a mix of multi-cultural expressions bathed in mediterranean colors. Acrylic, gouache, charcoal, pen and ink, visit with each other. Ripped, sliced, and cut paper are glued down and painted over. I work from memory, photographs, readings, and imagination. Uncensored personal experience mixed with regional events inform the meditative flow of an intuitive practice.

***(all images are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without the artist's permission)

“The earth is closing in on us,

Pushing us through the last passage,

And we tear off our limbs to pass through….

Where should we go after the last frontiers?

Where should the birds fly after the last sky?”

Mahmoud Darwish - 1995