Artists Registry

Visual Structures That Tell a Story

My work begins with the belief that visual structures can hold stories—sometimes stories that cannot be expressed through words alone. I am interested in the tension between opposing realities: beauty and devastation, monument and human scale, order and chaos, memory and loss.

This way of working came into sharp focus in a series of three paintings responding to the events of September 11, 2001. Rather than attempting to depict the events literally, I use visual metaphor, historical references, and juxtaposition to explore what remained—physically, emotionally, and symbolically.

Each painting approaches the tragedy from a different perspective, yet all three are connected by the same question: How do we make sense of something that is larger than our ability to comprehend it?

1. The Shrouded Women at the Tower of Babel

In the aftermath of the towers’ collapse, the landscape of lower Manhattan took on an unexpected and almost sacred quality. The white ash that covered the ruins created the appearance of a vast, ghostly cathedral.

The image of the Tower of Babel becomes a metaphor for human aspiration—the desire to build higher, reach farther, and create something monumental. Yet the fallen towers remind us of the fragility of those achievements. The shrouded women introduce another layer of meaning: mourning, witness, and the human presence within an almost otherworldly landscape.

2. The Antigone

The ancient Greek story of Antigone centers on a profoundly human act: the determination to recover and properly bury the dead.

In my painting, small human figures move through an immense field of rubble. Their scale in relation to the destruction emphasizes the almost impossible task before them. Yet their very smallness becomes a statement of human determination. Against an overwhelming landscape, the figures continue their search.

The ancient story and the modern tragedy meet in this shared human impulse—to find the dead, to identify them, to bring them home, and to give them dignity in death.

3. The Sky Is Blue

The Sky Is Blue is perhaps the simplest image of the three, and in some ways, the most personal.

It was an extraordinarily beautiful morning. The sky was blue, the weather was clear, and the day began with the promise of an ordinary day. My brother worked on Wall Street, and he was struck by how perfect the morning was.

That memory became an essential part of my understanding of September 11. The tragedy did not begin in darkness. It began on a beautiful morning.

The painting holds these two realities together—the breathtaking beauty of the sky and the unimaginable events that would soon take place beneath it. The blue sky becomes both a witness and a reminder: the natural world continued in its beauty even as human lives were irrevocably changed.

Together, these three paintings explore the space between what we see and what we understand. They are paintings about destruction, but also about memory, human dignity, mourning, and our enduring need to create meaning from loss.