Over a decade ago, while living in Bangkok, my Thai lover was killed by a hit man.  This personal tragedy created a before and after in my life and work.  While recovering, back in the States, I worked in a Spanish nightclub whose walls were decorated with vintage bullfight posters.  My consciousness forged a link between the brutal public spectacle of the bullfight and the cruel loss of my lover’s death.  During that time, I found the slang definition of Matador= Lady Killer in a dictionary and the impact of this meaning propelled me to research the bullfight further.

 

My work explores roots of reverence and warfare through a bullfight arena.  Sacred symbols of bulls in art and culture can be traced back to the beginnings of human recorded history.  There has been a fascination with this powerful animal over thousands of years.  The bull has been worshiped as a god, it has been sacrificed to the gods and has been integrated into many rituals.  This symbolic battle of One with the Other has continuously existed in similar forms from the past into the present.  For me, the bullfight references the transition from reverence of nature and balance into an eternally long period of domination, control over nature and warfare. 

 

I have witnessed many bullfights over these years and have found them to be quite awesome and devastating at the same time.   My obsession with the bullfight led me to be trained by a professional matador and I had the opportunity to experience being in the arena myself with a fierce and vital young animal.

 

In a world where it is said everything has been done already, I am interested in exploring the possibilities of what can be.  I am influenced by artists who have questioned the status quo, such as the architect Antonio Gaudi who altered the accepted rectilinear format of what a building should be into spaces that flow almost as nature itself.   I am inspired by the creation of new forms.  The cosmos is endless as is our possibility to create a more beautiful reality.  In my art I see the ruins of the arenas of the world overgrown with nature, transformed by time.  Nature Revives Itself after Man.