I make figurative oil paintings that engage the myths that have shaped the tenets of my personal philosophy. Pulled from sources as varied as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Wilco lyrics, Shakespeare’s plays and poems, the comic books of Grant Morrison, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and blues legends from the Mississippi Delta, my paintings examine my relationship with the archetypes inherent in these stories. The snapshot quality of frozen action tends to suggest a narrative rather than provide any real string of events, while the color interplay provides the closest thing to

To the ancient Greeks, daemons were spirit guides and forces of nature. They existed between mortals and deities. When I was younger, I feared being possessed by the much different Christian demons and being watched by voyeuristic, spying specters in some kind of limbo, with the old curandero acting as a medium. Now I feel nepantla—“a psychological, liminal space between the way things had been and an unknown future . . . a space in-between, the locus and sign of transition”—where “realities clash, authority figures of the various groups demand

The world that my work depicts is an alternate yet familiar universe, where one might feel at once incredibly comfortable and totally repelled. I pull the imagery for my paintings from Internet ads, cell phone pictures taken in the studio, stock art, and stills from YouTube videos. I edit down and manipulate the source material, eventually finding a way for sometimes very disparate elements to live together and redefine themselves.

My work is inspired by the tools of desire: wishes, hopes, pleas for divine or cosmic intercession, and superstitious rites. These are the things we turn to when something is desperately wanted but cannot be achieved through hard work or other rational means. My most recent works invoke the creation of something unknown, and good, from the remains of dreams that have broken.

My work is informed by the lived experience of chronic illness. The forms and processes in my sculptures reimagine the grotesque body as a site of joy and whimsy. They formally delight in the messiness of sickness, and explore digestion as a metaphor for how the body translates its environment.

I’m interested in what happens when one is confronted with a body that doesn’t conform to our commonly held definitions. “Body” is not limited to physical corporeality and can also refer to verbal bodies or bodies of knowledge or ideology—all have weight, form, and accepted anatomies. I’m interested in the potential within indeterminate bodies.

For years, my practice has focused on growth at a cellular level and the connectedness of life and death in the natural world. I have found so much complexity and beauty in the forms that result from natural growth and have recently begun to see similar patterns in less natural forms. I have become fascinated by the relationships between the organic and the man-made. Even in a cityscape we see cycles. Construction, completion, and decay are the life cycle of our built environments. Through the erasure and redrawing of lines in my work, I try to show the depth of the surroundings we

My paintings on black velvet have become a decades-long anthropological study of community and environment. Using the kitsch-laden material of black velvet and working-class characters from my youth as my subject, I create theatrical vignettes and frozen moments from an ongoing narrative. My goal is to capture the sincerity, dignity, and honesty of the world I grew up in.

As an artist, I experience the world around me with a keen observational eye. What has distinguished me for over fortyfive years from other artists in fiber is my choice to repurpose twentieth-century industrial materials such as tapes or films. I find order in this fodder and create beauty from the residue of our culture by transforming the materials into woven, stitched, or interlaced webs. From my studio practice, a new form of textile art has emerged. My sources include textiles structures, abstraction, and computer elements. In addition, politics, the military, social

We embraced, we laughed, we ate. Your body no longer exists. I often wonder where you are. Have you found paradise? Are you amongst the clouds? Are you with the ghosts that my great-grandmother used to tell me about? They say that humans exist in body, spirit, and mind. Perhaps your little notes still contain your consciousness. Maybe, whenever I quote you, you breathe again. How much of you did I capture in that portrait from many years ago? You are not that painting. But like you, paint functions in multiple states. The material can be cast, poured, stained, or even airbrushed. The medium’s