Irene McCray

The Body, Cloth, or Body and Cloth have been subject matter for my work over the years. Either the body is it's own subject, cloth is in concert with the body, or cloth takes on its own dance of transformation. In one recent series of paintings and drawings there are only impressions of bodies. I mean the images to portray intimate records of physical presence, people who were there and are no more. They are of left over representations that have very little identity attached to them, only indications in the cloth of someone remaining while gone. I mean them to be characterizations of the struggle to accept the departure of loved ones and the eventual nonexistence of the self. I am currently painting and drawing portraits of my mother in her final months with Alzheimer's disease. I do this as an honor to her force of character.