Rain is what comes to my mind. And rain is indicative of Winter. But how—or better, why—to form this into an art show?
How about a system of payment for reward, so to speak. How about getting in touch with the darkness of Winter. It is the darkness of Winter that gains us an appreciation for the coming light of Spring: the powering through a darkness to gain an appreciation of light. Rain for sun. Cold for warmth. High for low. The rain drives us in, but it also feeds the ground, and the life and green it spawns drives us later out.
This is the art of the Winter. Winter of the sky, Winter of the soul, Winter of the 5 o'clock news, Winter of fellowship, Winter of the tireless rain of the Pacific Northwest... This is the work of the darkness that holds a quiet beauty, knowing full well that an inevitable Spring is coming.
I have been and continue to be a painter firmly committed to the tradition of expressive figuration and the landscape. This new body of work represents those interests but also includes a new exploration of portraiture as a means of examining the human condition, particularly within family relationships. A portrait painting represents the human being as both a thing that is private and public, unique and generic. Here, I am working with a pictorial concept of the portrait to explore the fragile balance between the public and private voices expressed in my work.
I make my work on steel for many reasons: the durability, reflective quality, and psychological energy steel carries are just a few. It is raw and elemental. It conveys strength, permanence, and history. The images of architecture and nature I create are meant to connect to those qualities of steel directly. The process of making my work is also connected to the imagery in its industrial nature.
My images come from both the built and the natural environment around me. My eye is attracted to the strictly ordered lines and angles of industrial architecture, as well as the chaotic balance of lines found in nature. The two landscapes connect with the steel medium in different ways. The industrial architecture has a very direct connection, as the structures I etch into steel are usually made of steel themselves. The tree images are organic shapes, and when they are caustically rendered into the surface of the inorganic steel, they have a strong dichotomous connection. Conceptually, I see the two themes working together to represent balance, strength, and a power in duality.
The process I use to make my work is a multi-layered combination of new and classic techniques, involving photography, silkscreen, and acid etching. This process relates to the conceptual ideas of balanced duality, with its combining of tools and techniques that are both modern and archaic. I’ve found a deep satisfaction in my process. I use my creative instincts and design skills alongside my power tools and nitric acid. It is both refined and delicate, and at the same time raw and powerful.
Figures and the natural world have always been my focus. I use the human form symbolically to express the workings of the soul and mind, while nature for me embodies the complexities of creation.
I love the magic of paint and its ability to create a world that echoes our own but could really only exist in the imagination. I love the way light works and have studied it intensely so I can employ its secrets when creating illusion.
With a reverence for both beauty and craft, I depict figures in nature with a goal to provide unique insight into the universal journey through our human experience.
There is a strange disconnect between mental illness and normalcy—as if there is a stark, dividing line between the two. Black and white, completely separate. Us and them. I believe this arbitrary Classification (ill, healthy, recovering, etc.)is similar to how we catalog our colors (blue, red, green, etc.). The visible color spectrum reflects the human experience in the sense that colors cannot be contained as single, definable points. The spectrum is actually one band of ever shifting, ever transitioning hues, as are we: our lives and our experiences are continuous and overlapping, yet discreet.
All persons exist in a world with other persons. We interact daily with a wide range of people and personalities. It is not possible to limit your experience to "normal." We are but one piece in the cosmos. No one exists in a vacuum. So instead of pushing past others whose mental or physical health might not reflect exactly our own, we embrace. We are made of many parts, parts to our personalities, our bodies, and as one part to the rest of the world.
This collection of drawings and paintings are both illustrative, narrative, and subtly humorous. The rainbows and faces suggest we are all connected to each other as the human race and a thinking, feeling people.
I am in-between, navigating the tension between my native culture and those I have assimilated through my experiences in the world. This state of tension and my ongoing process of navigation are the subjects of my work. Juxtaposing disparate cultural aesthetics, I illuminate their similarities and dissimilarities, and shape my cultural identity in spaces where they converge.