Artist's Statement

Making Art is definitely all about the journey.

Quite simply, I adore pigment:  the loose and liquid quality of watercolor, the thick creaminess of oils and the dark graphic nature of charcoal.  I love both transparency and opacity.  I love key notes of pure sparkling color as well as areas of non-descriptive grays where layers of color speak a softer language.  I love line and mass; spontaneity and deliberation; the real and the imagined - all paired opposites.  My process involves a quest for harmony through the balancing of these opposing forces and can best be described as "create and destroy".  Self-exploration and investigation in the "gray areas" that describe the contradictions we all face have been paramount to my own personal and spiritual growth.

Strong values, movement and expressive stroke-making are important to me.  I attempt to resist "right" and "wrong" notions in my work, chasing, instead the rhythm of the moment.  I work at distilling life into its "simple essences", its absolutes.  My preferred subjects are the human figure and aging architectural elements, those subjects that, to me, have underlying hidden qualities.  I love the lyrical.

I have learned to paint by painting.  However, I feel that my work has followed a natural evolution of serious introspection that reflects earlier studies in music, dance, language and the observation of human behavior.  Through these reflections, my work draws on rhythm, movement, attention to detail, spontaneity and simplification of form, descriptions that are both apt and contradictory.  My work has evolved into painting because of my own disappointment in words, which are often excessive, elusive and loaded with a multitude of meanings dependent upon delivery;  i.e.disgust, condescension and lying.  As honest verbal communication with another person is so rare, I have turned instead to a visual form of communication which, to me, is almost pure, and more honest, to be certain.  I am intrigued by human behavior and seek to unearth that which lies beneath the surface, sometimes a sublime gesture, a memory, a visual metaphor...often contradictions, a truth for which there are no words.  I am searching for something soulful, something noble, something archetypical.  Perhaps the very nature of the human condition makes that impossible.

My work is a product of non-conceptualization where I try to clear my mind of the intellectual and move to the Zen state of mushin (no mind).  From this state I believe that I am more able to attain a connection to things directly and positively.  My work is controversial in that it focuses on that it means to be human, as well as a connection to our life on this earth, which is antithetical to the pervasive and complex technology- and consumption-driven culture that we live in.  I want my viewers to feel emotion, to feel human, with all of its imperfections.