GSW Series
My work explores the surface of the body as a site of profound personal, cultural, and social complexity. Over time, I’ve developed a visual language rooted in the skin—our most visible boundary between the internal and external world. It is both a shield and a canvas, chronicling the lived experience of that separation.
Drawing from research in tattooing, medical modeling, and phenomenology, I consider how the body records trauma, transformation, and time. Wounds—whether accidental or intentional—become marks that speak to the human condition. These marks, like brushstrokes, are altered by healing, aging, and decay, forming a visual palimpsest of experience.
Each piece invites a kind of viewing forensics, asking the viewer to examine layers of meaning embedded in the imagery and process. My work is organized into three distinct series, each exploring these ideas through different lenses.
The GSW series, begun in 2008, draws inspiration from the cultural obsession with forensic imagery and the poetic darkness of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. Painted expressively with brush and palette knife, these works depict gunshot wounds as contemporary “flowers of evil”—a haunting beauty that challenges the viewer to confront violence, vulnerability, and the aesthetics of pain.
