BY PROXY

Each of these portraits is a result of an encounter, an interaction, a sort of communication. They are personal. They are memories and shared gazes. They are investigations into the being-ness of another.

One early summer evening I encountered a Sphinx Moth lying motionless under a lamp on my desk. One of its wings was pulled out, I thought it was injured or possibly dead. I admired her for a long time.

If you know about the Sphinx Moth then you know that they are more similar to birds than to insects; their bodies are relatively large to the scale of their wings, their gaze is intense, and their markings are regal, especially the pink part on their hind wings. I held her in my hands and got lost in her physicalness - the antennas, her heavy body, the hooks on her spindly legs that account for feet. 

The differences between the moth and I was not one of politics, or beliefs, or gender, or dress. This type of difference, it occurred to me, is the most radical difference I have ever encountered – it is sensory, it is morphological, it is perceptive, it is scale. What can I learn from her? 

Oil on Canvas, 20" x 20"

2017