My recent work is a new series of single and multi-layered graphite drawings on Duralar. This work is based on images I’ve captured digitally from early silent movies and vintage black and white films, such as official propaganda films of atomic bomb tests. Each layer is precisely 1/24th of a second of the original film.

I’m attracted to “hinge” moments, that instant when there is a spark of violence that will change everything afterwards, or a natural disaster that likewise changes everything in literally a split second. Some of these moments are physical struggles between people that change the plot of a film meant purely for entertainment. Others record actual moments of violence and power that have changed history.

Choosing these images from the past and pulling the figures out of their environment isolates them from a particular narrative and focuses on the violence that is happening or will happen soon. For us, it has already happened as an historical moment, but it continues to reverberate.