I prefer to learn and work in various mediums and styles in order to diversify the way I can communicate. I liken this approach to being multilingual. Working in this way helps me better understand the world and its symbols, both natural and artificial.

With this particular body of work, I wanted to explore color through a process not unlike the CMYK printing method, but with variations on dot pattern and size, medium, and execution. The subjects of this series are family and friends, simply because they are the people I celebrate. They are my celebrities.

I am interested in pushing the envelope of drawing with a keen eye for detail and narrative. In doing so, I verify the mysticism of drawing which keeps me engaged with it as a vehicle for visual expression. I choose graphite, collage, or mixed media for my tools. I am inspired by iconography, daguerreotype photography and art history, and am interested in how my work can affirm reality and explore deeper areas of the human condition. When successful, my artwork is both playful and challenging, and, like an icon, invites contemplation.

I am trying, playfully, to somehow expose the essence of our existence, or at least some crucial aspect of understanding the human predicament. With this foundational starting point, I hope to come to terms with the primitive inquiry for long term and sustaining fulfillment. I approach this built-in desire with spiritual honesty.

A labyrinth of private emotions exists within each of us. Shaped by personal experiences, their constant presence subconsciously influences how we interpret our world. The imagery of vacant interiors offers a safe setting where I can explore these quiet, submerged emotions without becoming too literal in my portrayals. Although each drawing is created through searching my own perceptions, the resulting rooms are ambiguous enough to house the personal experiences of each viewer.

I want painting to be like a game. I paint and I play games, and in my studio work I play around the borders of both to see what lies between. I use a variety of media to create paintings that are, through their meandering exploration of form and space, suggestive of an alternate world. Given that I am working along the vector of “play,” these alternate spaces take on the nature of the maps and landscapes of games I have experienced, creating imagery that is reflective of the format of such games and also functions as a template for compositional and narrative improvisation.

A few facts:

I collect moments of revelation and visually give them away as a drawing or a painting. In sharing these revelations, I hope to motivate the viewer to reassess things typically taken for granted.

My work stems from a personal desire to process and reflect on the increasingly haywire relationship and confusion contemporary society has with the natural world, and the forced and uneasy assimilations that take place when the two inevitably meet. Much of this work deals with death, disquiet, chaos and collapse, but not entirely absent in these works is also hope or beauty. I’m intrigued by tension in art and aspire to insert this element on some level into each piece that I create.

These works are an investigation of portraiture as a way of documenting and exploring my relationships with, and perceptions of, close friends and family. I am interested in the static nature and artifice of the posed portrait. By referencing early American folk paintings I seek to depict the tender awkwardness that those works exemplify. Both manufactured and factual, character traits are revealed through clothing, patterns, and props. Each accoutrement helps to suggest a particular time period for each portrait.

This recent series of work focuses on landscape in the postmodern world. The intention of these paintings is to unify the quiet aesthetics of traditional landscape with the visual onslaught beginning with the advent of modern technology. Each landscape is grounded with elements of structure and permanence while others fall away or become illusions. The rendering of the unbalanced into symmetry is an effort to comprehend the benefits and shortcomings of the way we understand the world in the age of information.