Medium: Acrylic painted on glass and then soaked in water to release it.
This piece draws on a personal and emotional experience tied to my father’s battle with Parkinson’s after neck surgery, an event that led to him falling and knocking out his front teeth. While sketching the aftermath of that fall, I began to reflect on the structure of my father—both physically and emotionally—as a crumbling figure missing its center, yet still functioning in some way, like a pathway or mechanism that keeps moving.
There’s a visual juxtaposition between this crumbling structure and a power station in the background, representing the place where my father worked for over 20 years, leading safety meetings and conducting sensitivity training. The metaphor of a broken system, missing pieces but continuing to produce smoke, became a central theme.
This work was exhibited alongside Carlos Vasquez’s mid-career survey and is now stored in the American painters section of the Smithsonian, preserving both the personal and societal aspects of power and decay.