COSMIC TREASURES........................Rather than paint, I work with Ink & Light & Shadow …. tactile encounters with paper, silk, canvas, chemistry, technology, & glass................." at times you must recede in order to attack.”..........................I recently read a beautiful essay, In Praise of Shadows, by Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki. It's a love poem to the fragile & beautiful quality of detail, shape and line that hides in the shadows, sometimes drawn w threads of gold or silver in ancient Japanese aesthetic, brought to life in the glow of light..................................Rather than a pencil I work w a camera. I am a painter, a photographer, an artist, a visual poet. my process is part digital, part physical. I work via the screen, that safe zone? in reality there is no control, no safe zone. On the screen it's an illusion. Without control, there is vulnerability, substance, realness, life, magic. My process is transparent. It shows its seams, it’s imperfections, it's warts. the line between the digital and the real is blurred.............................The process is improvisational. I am sampling, layering. The works are alive. Changing, breathing, acting, reacting, in dialogue. I repurpose images, layers, information: Digital and physical, combining and reusing, creating new works, new content, new words, new syllables. Constantly rewinding & pushing play. Disintegration, accumulation. Mud vs clarity. Dissonance vs consonance. Surprising, Misleading, dense and emotional….............................Was looking at some of DeKooning’s paintings this morning, found my eyes fascinatingly jumping forward & back, awkward moments of perspective. Dense amount of visual vocabulary and styles, words, screams, poems littered throughout his canvases...................................Recently I have decided to try on being a THEY rather than a SHE. I have never felt a gender. Occasionally I love being a woman, occasionally I feel more like a man. My gender seems to always be in question. Yelled at, scolded, bullied, criticized, laughed at. Criticized that I didn’t behave “my gender” or that I didn’t look my gender. I have now chosen to own this liminal space. I want to be a THEY. I believe this move will afford me an even greater sense of freedom. I’m trying this on for size.................................Jazz, noise, pop, hip hop…. the blues, Brazilian, Ethiopian, Nigerian..percussive, melodic, confrontational… seductive...................................Joan Didion, Eileen Myles, Patti Smith. In The M Train, Patti Smith wrote about staying at some upscale hotel in London for 3 days just to binge watch crime t.v. series!! AWESOME!! Lets be our real selves, not hide behind some glamorous make believe. Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Eileen Myles all inspire me. Reading Myles's writings is as if I’m reading free jazz or noise music. A DeKooning even. A rollercoaster ride with twists and turns, then jerking to a sudden crawl.............................................Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Fritz Lang. The Big Sleep, Suspicion, The postman Always Rings Twice, The Dark Knight. I love Chinese martial arts films. Hong Kong and Korean action films, and mos def Korean campy horror flicks. Japanese Anime & comics...................................I collect, am inspired and moved by Japanese photography of the 70’s: the provoke movement in particular. Daido Moriyama, Araki, Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi…. the collective set out to create photographic imagery that could escape language and code, created photographic imagery from the heart, as an expression, To provoke ideas and thoughts that words couldn’t.............................Other direct and indirect influencers: my dear friends Christopher Wool, Charline Von Heyl, Joyce Pensato, Eileen Quinlan. Eileen and I have formed a collaborative entity called ET (Eileen/ Tamar). Polke, Dieter Roth, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens, Rauschenberg. Alexander McQueen, Vivenne Westwood. In truth my entire community of artists all influence and give me energy.....................I love this quote by Carlos Fuentes: "Don’t classify me….I’m an artist not a genre. Don’t look for the purity of the work in some nostalgic cannon of the past, do not ask for generic affiliation. Language is a sharing and a shared part of culture that cares little of formal classifications…and cares much about vitality and connection. For culture perishes in purity and isolation which is the deadly wages of perfection. No one creates from nothing. Novelty is always a variation on the past. Poetry is a form of thought, and thought is a form of poetry. “........................With these thoughts I bid you adieu.