HOLDING PATTERNS

My painting series, Holding Patterns, is about liminal movement through space. When awaiting permission to land, an aircraft maintains a flight path called holding patterns, where the plane exists in flux until given grounding directions. The paintings are caught in a current and awaiting stability. The vertical views are contemplative, calling to mind a prolonged gaze out a window. Passive to the landscape, a viewer looks at length, but cannot see enough to grasp anything definitively. This window view gives us both access and denial. These atmospheric landscapes shift between worlds, existing in the in-between. I, too, exist in this space — traveling back and forth to see my spouse who, at the time, lived across the country from me. Seeing these images repeated in paintings or drawings indicates a state of perpetual sameness, an adherence to no place, and a familiarity with elsewhere. What do we miss in the movement, and what do we gain for the movement?