You Have My Attention

Acrylic on Cradled Wood Panel, 12 panels, 9x12”. 2019. 

We are made of time, and we are bound to time. Time’s elasticity and the significance we assign to how we spend it has confounded and inspired artists and writers, such as Jorge Luis Borges in his mediation on time, and Ursula K. Le Guin  in her Hymn to Time. The ability to self track our time with “smart” technology now gives us the ability to trace our hours.  You Have My Attention is influenced both by daily data points generated by self-tracking and “The Daily Rituals of How Artist’s Spend Their Time.” These paintings seek to expand the conversation with a visual representation of a working artist and mother’s complicated life, a reflection about its larger patterns and nuanced detail.This project is about careful observation, identity politics and the powerful patterns of daily routine.

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You Have My Attention is comprised of 12 small paintings of colored blocks of time that encode the variety of tasks and individuals that receive the artist’s attention-each painting depicting a month. Tension is built between what the artist intentionally puts her focus on, and that which requires the artist’s attention. Sleep, Exercise, Self Care, Creative, Household, Commute, Day Job, Leisure with her husband, family, friends… These shapes of daily documented time undulate across the panel as though a landscape of her time, waves traversing across the surface.