My whole life I have found deities, specifically Asian Religious deities and gods extremely fascinating. I have always had a spiritual and visionary connection, a feeling of power and universal energy when I see these epic characters in print or in person. The first experience I had in person was hilariously at a "Japanese" Steak House in Durham, NC as child. There were an assortment of buddhist statues, mainly sitting Buddhas and a set of Samurai Armor in the museumesque entrance way walking into the highly americanized corporate take on a Japanese experience. Nonetheless at the age of 6 I was astounded and completely transported to a surreal world of power, dynamism, energy, history, and feeling that I had before then not known.
In Taiwan and Singapore when I was 7, en route with my father's modern dance company Pilobolus at the time, I first time was able to see real larger than life statues of the buddha, of deities, of creatures from Asian folklore, of dragons, of tiger, fish, even the famous lion headed fish in Singapore. My mind swirled and I felt compelled to discover more.
Deities have played a major role in the evolution of my figurative abstraction works over time. Creating creatures larger than life and beyond human comprehension that eventually overtake the world that we live in under the illusion that we human's actually control any of it. Raijin and Fujin are two of my favorites that I continue to investigate in my personal work. My trips to Japan have really continued to compel me to connect with these two major figures of Japanese Mythology and Religious Iconography and I continue on to immerse myself deeper and learn more about this aspect of culture. I have to stop writing at this moment to continue on my day, but let this passage be an intro to an ongoing investigation into seeking the power of these deities and finding my own interpretations of them into my own work, mythology, and practice.
Raijin from my solo exhibition "The Scourge" with Superchief Gallery NYC
