Fieldwork

I can’t wait for spring so I’m arranging the flowers to brighten up the room.

The original sketches for these flowers were drawn in Flash, an early computer software for drawing simple lines and animations. I used only my finger on the keypad of my first laptop and came up with simple shapes filled with flat areas of colour. Flash allowed for layering of images where photos can float under graphics as in old-fashioned animation layering.

In 2003 I was in Germany and playing with this new drawing tool when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Der Speigel magazine published an article on the invasion that compared the Baghdad bombing to that of Dresden in 1945, showing photos of the destruction. These images clearly compared the awful consequences of the past to what was happening right then in Iraq.

The photo from der Speigel became the background for my Flowers. These flowers are cute and cartoon like but they also remind me of war.

Later I made these flowers into installations of cut-outs that have been shown in various places. The cutouts are part painting and part object, 3D but flattened.