In my current work, Pink Elephants, I combine the sublime with the ridiculous. A constructed reality is presented, with abstract and representational modes forming a fractured narrative dealing with issues of identity. My work confronts social constructs of masculinity, questioning traditional “male” roles through the use of decorative motifs and patterns. Childlike images are viewed through an adult lens. My paintings create visually profuse fields imbued with metaphorical allusions to tradition and culture.

My work is a response to both the natural and built landscape and how we inhabit, interact, and encounter space and form. The intention of my work is to address the theme of expansion and recession, consumption and growth. I am intrigued by how we inhabit and utilize space. My work responds to the built form, partly for its architectural purpose, but quite often I am drawn to such objects for the dialogue that these forms have with one another and with the space in which they inhabit.

In my paintings, I want to depict human situations without being bound by the logic and restrictions of the human form. To achieve this, I use vintage dolls as stand-ins for people. I am drawn to the stylization and distortion that these objects possess and the total freedom I have in how they are portrayed. The figurines and dolls function as characters performing roles, similar to actors in a movie. In this body of work, the doll characters are engaged in mildly dramatic activities. The lighting is at times dark and slightly foreboding.

My painting process focuses on the discovery and intensification of elements of visual beauty in the observable world, what George Santayana referred to as ìpleasure objectifiedî. Due to my haptic nature, this seductive beauty resides in tactile surfaces, undulating folds of fabric combined with a sense or residue of humanity. This translates literally into closets of unwearable clothing and storage boxes of fabric, drapery and costumes. Representing the human form by what covers or enfolds it is similar to the idea of using touch to ìseeî. Both evoke a sense of sensuous disorientation.

I’ve been making work that explores the idea of an existence after an ambiguous cataclysm like a new Big Bang. Viewers are unsure what kind of bang this was exactly, and now the world they see is similar to our own, but things here are more askew and strange. Using many diverse elements from Japanese pop culture and art history to science fiction, Chinese propaganda posters, and real life, these ideas and elements from our collective cultures have now become literal agents of evolution.