Wayward Home is a translation of a photograph I took and settled into the kind of matrix of circles that I have been experimenting with for quite some time. I shifted the original image to align with the rhythms of the matrix, which feels more visceral and loving than the analytic rendering of a likeness tends to afford me.

While I was working on this painting, I was re-reading French orientalist, Henri Corbin’s Man of Light. I find myself going back over a path I followed in my late teens and early 20s during a spiritual quest – I sometimes feel as if I am walking on a world of light. And sometimes I feel as if I am following or being led, almost imperceptibly, by a guide or an angel, and what I have to consider is the very real possibility that this is my angel, my other “I” as a “You” in the third person.

Or something like this. In a significant moment during my year of intensive mediation and reflection, the magnificent ball of light that visited me… I didn’t recognize it! It’s the ground of grounds, the greatest peace and joy I’ve ever felt, all philosophy and theory I read I compare to this year of quest, but… who? what was that thing? I’ve reasoned many things, but Sufism in Corbin’s hands seems to speak to me.

Living as an expat has its challenges: one no longer really feels at home anywhere. What I do know is that when I make a work like this, I come closer to feeling this world of light just under the surface of everything that is my true place, my Wayward Home.