The Blue of Distance

This body of work is primarily focused on the personification of the Texas landscape as explored through my father and our relationship. In August 2011, my father passed away. Though he was fighting pancreatic cancer, his death seemed sudden as he died mere hours before I was able to get back home to him. I’ve struggled with those last moments ever since. My father was a massive presence yet fleeting. He flitted in and out of my life in various ways and as such, I never knew him beyond the singular moments of fatherly life. Now, with time and distance, I understand him as I would the Texas landscape – familiar, a home. Yet unexplored and vast. My father used to tell me that Texas was God’s Country. It was handpicked by a higher power and nothing would ever compare. So recently, I went back home to explore this notion – to try and find my father within this land. What I realized, for all my father’s words, God really was waiting for me in the hills, in the trees, in my mother’s hands. Through these images, I’m blurring the lines between Texas and my father. One becomes the other, becomes the other, becomes the other, continuously. Thus, begins the understanding of fluidity between life and death, and the father who is becoming the land.