About the Bare Bones series...

Bare Bones, is a series of large scale multipanel drawings done in charcoal, powdered graphite and pastel, which were a response to living in the city of San Cristobal, Chiapas, Mexico, for extended periods of time over many years of my life. The drawings depict Mayan (Chamula) women, the common objects they carry in their daily lives -- babies, chickens, flowers, fruits, vegetables-- and the knotted rebosos or shawls they carry them in.

In these drawings the faces and hands are drawn in black and white powdered graphite and charcoal with smooth, subtle transitions of tone from one area to the next, making them appear timeless and still, almost ancient. In contrast, the objects (which are objects of daily life and work) are drawn in a full range of intense, pastel colors, with active visible marks building up layered color. This makes the brightly colored objects appear immediate, present, and vibrant, as if the figures are merely ghosts moving through the constant world of objects.

The isolation and contrast of individual elements in the image evoke associative relationships between them, allowing for a metaphoric reading of the images as well as a descriptive one. In Bare Bones #24 a mother's face and a baby's face, each in different light, each absorbed in a private world, both related to each other but separate, float above the knot of the reboso that ties them together. They are drawn on two different panels within the painting, dealing with the notions of togetherness and separateness. In Bare Bones #34, faces of three generations, and hands of three generations, are seen in the context of a bunch greens, also of three generations: the leaves, the flowers and the roots. Again the knot is included, again the image is drawn on separate panels. These drawings explore ideas of separateness and connection, of timelessness and immediacy, of permanence and change.