Though primarily a painter, as a multidisciplinary artist I make no distinction between paint and any other medium I use to create my work. With every technique and material, I physically manipulate the work to reveal its inherent nature and create tension and balance with the illusion of the image itself. I pursue realism because I love the challenge of capturing an accurate likeness in the completely deconstructed way that moving paint or pixels around demands. And I often incorporate other hand-manipulated materials, such as wood, metal, or plastic, to contextualize the image and to give the work a tangible physicality. This further breaks down the illusion of the image and gets closer to my goal of creating something new, not a representation of something else.
My inspiration is the human form: face and body are endlessly fascinating. My subjects are real people composed from life. As such, my work can be intensely personal, but I strive to make it accessible to everyone by crafting with careful sensitivity. I attempt to create thoughtful compositions that balance visual tension with the serenity of light and color.
The content of my work concerns human connection and the difficulty finding empathy and true understanding for others. For all the talking and looking we do, we seem less effective at actually connecting with one another in meaningful ways. We tend to engage with others indirectly or superficially, acting though avatars of our real selves. The directness of the subject's gaze in most of my work is deliberate: it insists on engagement despite possible discomfort arising from perceptions of challenge or vulnerability. But to see and be seen we should never look away.
My goal is to harmonize every element, using one thing to represent another but as more than the sum of its parts. To create, in a word, Art.
SD 2023