Me-K'S BEGINNINGS

My writing grows out of my training as a visual artist. It is an extension of my work first in printmaking collage and found object sculpture, then in video installation and film/video art. I was very influenced by the visual art of Robert Rauschenberg, Egon Schiele, Barbara Kruger, and the films and video art of Michelangelo Antonioni, Maya Deren, and Janice Tanaka.

I am fascinated by the language used to describe the fragmentation and disintegration in the paintings of Picasso and Schiele. I became obsessed with describing the way in which the faces of my characters would distort, become ugly, melt away, then morph before disappearing. I find the grotesqueness of the imagery entirely beautiful.

In "6.25 (Yook-i-oh)," a story in which the fallout from a love triangle inspires a screenwriter to detour into her own destination, I set up scenes based on the imagery of Egon Schiele's portraits. Similar to how Peter Greenaway derived his sets and costuming in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover from a 17th Century painting by Frans Hals, I attempt to translate Schiele's tableaux into my scenes and characters. The energy and movement of the characters' outlines and silhouettes is disturbed by the frenetic, nervous brush strokes of Schiele, and corresponds to particular points of shame, betrayal, and desperation.