Pareidolia: From Ancient Greek para (amiss, wrong)+eidōlon, (image)
The tendency to interpret a vague stimulus as something known to the viewer, such as seeing shapes in clouds…
The word Pareidolia plays a dual role in this visual narrative. As a phenomenon equally applicable to cloud castles as oil spills, it seemed fitting that it take on, in its form and content, elements of both. It is meant to reflect a visual phenomenon first but also a place, an imagined garden. I drew source material from many places, most significantly the work of Victorian botanical illustrators whose names are lovingly referenced in the titles of many of the painting in this series.
In Pareidolia we see a world of wholesale fecundity, a coexistence of growth and death and an overwhelming, even menacing potential for life. Since this series began and developed under a real time deluge of news reports about oil in the Gulf of Mexico, it was inevitable that it became a garden grown in amorphous forms against backgrounds of black ichor. The dual nature of life and death is easily equated with this lifeblood of ancient gods, made poisonous to the touch of mortal creatures. The awkward combination of these elements is intended to suggest that our collective desires not only have size and weight but, in some cases, may be measured by the litre.
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