Artist Statement: The Panic in Needle Park

All of my work, even that which does not appear so on the surface, is drawn from a deep autobiographical and personal well. The paintings in the series The Panic in Needle Park, as well as the accompanying abstract works, are no different.

 I am a product of the 1970’s. Subsequently, my visual references can be clearly linked to that period. Films that, at the time, were considered groundbreaking and departing from the big studio productions of the ’50’s and ’60’s, are etched in my memory: Midnight Cowboy, Serpico, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Panic in Needle Park (to name just a few), presented life in a very un-Hollywood fashion. The almost grainy feel, the colors, the lack of a musical soundtrack–when I watch them, I am transported to another time.

 The Panic in Needle Park is particularly meaningful to me. As an artist and a writer, I noticed that the script was written by Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne. The story is about, essentially, a poor little rich girl who gets sucked into a world of drugs. The script is about Helen, played by Kitty Winn, who is charmed by Al Pacino’s character Bobby.

The story’s about Helen. But Pacino’s magnetism (this is his second film) washes over her and washes over the viewer. In an effort to reclaim Helen’s story, I have photographed, from the television, every frame and scene that deals with Helen’s character. I have omitted any and all containing Bobby. The figurative paintings, then, are based on the hundreds of images collected from my photographs of the movie. In my mind, they bring the story back to Helen, and put the focus, no matter how obscure and inscrutable it might be to the passing viewer, where it belongs.