I have a simultaneous fear of and fascination with horror films. Horror films tap into our aversion to what we don’t understand and can’t control – nature, the non-rational, the Other. Tension is created most intensely by the liminal moments when there is no action and no visible monster. The ambiguous image is sourced from a seemingly insignificant detail within a fleeting scene in the 1922 film Nosferatu, a film that has haunted me since I was 7 years old. This forest landscape, zoomed in here to the point of abstraction, appears in Nosferatu after our first sighting of the vampire in his coffin. It is after this scene that Nosferatu travels to the town to prey on its inhabitants. Transforming the original work (film) through digital, analog and material processes re-contextualizes it within the current cultural, technological and ecological moment.

media: graphite & watercolour on paper

dimensions:  22” W x 30” H

Nosferatu, Me and the Grid was commissioned by Mirabo Press, Buffalo, NY.