The DNA Series

This body of work is inspired by my quest to find my father’s birth father. Trying to trace lineages through half-remembered stories, hunches and DNA testing got me thinking about links and connections through time. The work represents paths I’ve followed trying to trace this particular piece of my family tree: paths that sometimes get stronger, branch off into unexpected directions, fade away or stop abruptly.  The search became compulsive and all consuming for a time, and this got me thinking about how everything ultimately is connected, how energy flows from one place to another and how much chance decides the direction it’s going to go. One decision leads to a particular direction and outcome while another choice leads to an entirely different one.

 

The lines in my work symbolically represent lines of DNA but I see this flow of energy repeatedly all around me - in river systems, branches and roots of trees, blood vessels in the human body. They speak to me of the flow of life as well as the fact that everything is so finely balanced, that transience and fragility is central to it all. I’ve tried to communicate the tenuousness and delicacy of life in my work.