The March Hare
Each individual in The March Hare is a commanding abstract portrait dehumanized by the ears of the hare and given a haunting persona with the addition of human eyes.
They’re a soft but terrifying manifestation of our most closely held fears.
They are not costumes or embodiments of specific human characters, but are the spectral beings of Kristeva’s world of the abject.
In form, they live in a grey area between drawing and painting, a tactile critique of the blurred boundaries between painting and drawing in the contemporary and a simultaneous veneration and abolishment of the precious art object on buckled paper.
Their scale and installation create a looming sense of discomfort that is made comfortable through a soft pastel palette.
As I continued to make this work, I began to pull in references of the rabbit and the hare that are present in literature, religion, and pop culture.
Looking at internet pictures of 70s Easter Bunny candids and researching the Easter Hare, who determined whether children were good or disobedient at the start of Eastertide.
The eyes of these characters are references from photographs of soldiers and generals from the Civil War. I also pulled in allusions to rabbits as symbols of sexuality and fertility, and their use as symbols in concepts of sex and gender.
The work is resolved through its lack of resolution, the haunting spaces between the finished works, and the ideas that informed their creation.
Foam, paper mache, acrylic, plaster, fabric and string, handmade eyes from children’s clay, 60 x 29 x 29 in, 2014
acrylic on paper, 36 x 93 in, 2013
acrylic on paper, 36 x 93 in, 2013
acrylic on paper, 36 x 93 in, 2013
acrylic on paper, 36 x 93 in, 2013
acrylic on paper, 36 x 93 in, 2013