Murder is terrifyingly easy in America. You can kill a stranger, dump the body in a place where it will never be found and be 2,000 miles away before the murdered person is even missed. At any given time there are an estimated twelve to fifteen serial murderers at large in the country, just drifting around, snatching random victims and then moving on, leaving behind few clues and no motives. Every year in America approximately 5,000 murders go unsolved. That is an incredible number.

Missing as a collective is about a journey, both actual and metaphorical. The ‘actual’ is that of our protagonist (unseen) and his quest to charm and lure his prey to their ultimate and untimely demise.

Theirs is also an ‘actual’ journey, from the centre of their world (and yet the centre of nothing and nowhere), to a land of dreams and promises, that becomes a journey into the mind of darkness and their iconographic ‘resting’ places; a truck, a trailer, a railway carriage and a disused gas station.

The ‘metaphorical’ journey is that into the imaginary psyche of an intelligent and charming serial killer, disillusioned with the moral and social decay that is ‘back state’ USA and also driven by his attraction and the simultaneous revulsion of his victims. ‘You’re not in Walt Whitman’s Kansas anymore’

It is a ‘metaphorical’ journey for the young girls also - from their closed off world of visions, beliefs and experiences into the reality of life: that which is on the surface is only a veneer of skin and light and noise - the rest is whatever you hope it is; but know it’s probably not.

Artist's note:
There are only 2 things to really point out here, firstly the composition. The organisation of the story in a series of squares and rectangles is really to reinforce the structure of the thoughts of our fictitious serial killer. I see him as an OCD and logical man. He lives his life in a series of carefully planned events based on a very set of decisions. There is nothing left to chance by this man. The content of these squares represent this man’s memory of the events leading up to the eventual and inevitable conclusion. They are a series of snap shot flash backs.

The other thing to mention is the background colour of each of the pieces - they are literally the elemental hues associated with each location, the colour of the rich grass, of clay soil, of peat bogs, of grey flat skies and rich copper tree barks.

The inclusion of Walt Whitman poetry is there to reinforce the thought that my imaginary killer is a learned man - perhaps a professor. He is a rich man able to travel freely from state to state, eluding his pursuers of evading justice. Added to this is the fact that Mr Whitman lived his life in secrecy and in denial of his own sexuality. Our perpetrator finds solace in ‘sharing his secret’ with this poet.