Acrylic and vintage book on linen-finish paper, 31.5 x 31.5 cm

Abstract painting collage works inspired by Marguerite Duras’ novella The Lover (L’Amant) – a sparse, disjointed, dreamy, almost hallucinatory minimal tale of love and cruelty. Of longing, absence, primitive need, and dislocation.  The novel speaks to the language of dreams, the language of recollections.                                         

The title of the series, La Petite Mort (Little Death) – refers to the French expression meaning "the brief loss or weakening of consciousness." Modern usage refers specifically to "the sensation of post orgasm as likened to death.” More widely, it can refer to the spiritual release that comes with orgasm or to a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of the expenditure of the "life force." Literary critic Roland Barthes spoke of la petite mort as the chief objective of reading literature, the feeling one should get when experiencing any great literature.