Artist statement: The Sound and the Fury

Landscapes evoke memories of more than a pleasant view. They carry with them the sounds, tastes, smells, and sensory experiences of the past; suggestions and seductions of the future; and the comfort of the now.

The encaustic landscapes in this series, The Sound and the Fury, are based on memories of the South, specifically the alluvial plains of the Mississippi Delta. The titles of the paintings are quotes from William Faulker’s novel, The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner, a son of Mississippi, and resident of the Delta, references Macbeth’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow soliloquy Act V, Scene 5, Line 30 as the title of the novel.

Like the imaginary blood of guilt she can never wash clean, the Mississippi River metaphorically and literally washes much of the United States clean — of our soil and of our sins — depositing both good and evil in the Mississippi Delta where the wages of power and inequality are still being paid.