Artist Project / Legerdemains

Legerdemains continues a series of works derived from paintings I have encountered only in the form of museum-shop postcards, intentionally insulating myself from the “primal” source of the original and preferring to work instead with the materiality of a kitsch token of an experience never had. Without quite realizing I was under the thrall of the word magic, I was drawn to images that suggested liminal elements of magic iconography: theater-like curtains, oriental costumes, Tommy Cooper’s fez, magic birds. Only one postcard is purchased, and then cut freehand during a single session, with no prior drawing, using gestures or flourishes—sleights-of-hand—that may or may not fail.