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About this Piece

The idea behind my Tri-Star Music drawings is to engage with a constant and prolific drawing practice at my desk, reminiscent of how my godfather, who worked at Tri-Star Music in the ’80s, wrote memos on the stationary I use as the base for the drawings. Unlike his memos, my work as an artist involves creating marks, symbols, images, and phrases—nonsense wrapped in beauty and delivered with confidence and style. This practice starts with simple doodling and becomes more advanced; at first it’s about capturing burning ideas through spontaneous high-energy marks, which I then refine into polished drawings. These drawings can act like mirrors, reflecting not just what is in my consciousness, but my physical state of being. 

These particular drawings of the series were influenced by Matt Copson's Last Days, which explores themes of light and death, and the illumination before death. In my drawings, I experiment with light, using an office highlighter at times, to reflect Copson’s aesthetic that incorporates lasers and illusions created by moving light. I also thought there was an uncanny connection with the fact that these drawings were on a music company memo pad; it made me think of the scenes of Last Days where the music industry is portrayed almost like a villain. —Nora Berman