Old Haunts

Old Haunts is the name of my ongoing series, in which I paint like a gaslit, unreliable narrator. I place specters of my family in our old neighborhood Rockaway Beach, our former homes, and the defunct Playland amusement park. Ghosts are a fitting substitute for our corporeal bodies. As the only Latinx family in a predominantly white enclave, neighbors perceived our presence as alternately invisible and threatening. Rockaway’s proximity to the ocean suggests a metaphor: beautiful but dangerous, the glittering surface belies a toxic undercurrent of racism and classism.

Collage elements serve two purposes. First, they create improvisational opportunities. Second, they evoke the notion of concealment: I want the viewer to question what is hidden beneath the layers. Next comes the scumbled and scraped acrylic paint, wet charcoal, and watercolor pencil, simultaneously burying and excavating the works’ history. 

I am compelled to make this work as a means of reconciling my memories with local mythology. Objects that I hardly know, like the rollercoaster that was torn down before I was tall enough to ride it, are rendered with detail and volume. Drawing as a research methodology: meant to learn the entity’s construction and history. Subjects I understand intimately, like my childhood home, are drawn efficiently as shorthand symbols or runes. I have drawn these before, and will again, they are now fully absorbed into my vocabulary. This subjective experience of a place is what consumes my practice; it is the difference between knowing and understanding.

2019 - Ongoing