Much has been written about changes in visual technology and how they affect our ways of seeing. The printing press and camera, to name just two technological revolutions, profoundly altered our visual interaction with our surroundings and forced us to adapt our aesthetic relationship with the world. The television and computer screen, now deeply integrated visual changes in our lives, have an inward light quality, a glow that, when we switch them on, inspires tiny moments of anticipation throughout our day. As each is turned on our life is about to change in a small way. We are aware of great potential.

My recent paintings are loosely based on electro-magnetic images of the AIDS virus as it attacks a white blood cell, kills it and flees to find another cell to attack. Aesthetically, in this format, the virus is quite beautiful. Somehow the light quality in the photos on what appeared to be monumental objects referred both to a quiet intimacy and epic events at the same time. As I began working on the paintings I realized they were becoming narrative images: epic events of infection and death occurring at a microscopically intimate level.

Somehow the use of gold, a precious metal, as the reflective light source in these paintings, glazed with the organic coloring of amber shellac, (the sexual excretion of the lack beetle) interfaces positively with the images of the AIDS virus, computer screen (internet), international interaction, viral geography, potential of life and death.