Sanquhar, Scotland, 2021
In April 2021 just after the Covid lockdown was lifted, I went on residency at Merz Gallery in Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire. It was incredible to be in the countryside and each day I packed my materials on my back and walked out to work in the landscape.
One morning I noticed a terrace of two farm cottages just outside the village. I had seen them before but didn’t realise they were uninhabited until I climbed the gate and had a look. The atmosphere of abandonment and decay made the cottages feel timeless.
I experimented on the building itself. Placing stencils and found objects, using found fragments of mirror to make timelapse videos, painting ghost images on the windows. I used stencils made of my childhood home in Ohio for window paintings. The cottages themselves became a kind of collage.
Like everything else here, my work was temporary, part of a process of disintegration. Documenting the removal of objects and paintings on the windows was an important part of the process. I did three large paintings on paper outside and then inside, used found materials to create collage.
There was something oddly familiar about this place. Judging from old post inside, the cottages had been abandoned in the 1990s around the same time I had arrived in Scotland. We had left Brooklyn and ended up renting a farm cottage for similar to this one (though much smaller) in rural Angus. I felt pulled back 30 years, as if I were in a parallel universe. These cottages became a catalyst for new possibilities. Instead of ghosts I found incredible freedom to experiment and create.
