Artist Statement

close up of How to Catch the Eye of a Woman You Pass on the Street — close up of *How to Catch the Eye of a Woman You Pass on the Street*

There’s an amount of chaos throughout most of my paintings. In college, I developed an understanding of certain Eastern philosophies, compositions and brushstrokes. Other influences, such as Max Ernst, Franz Kline, and Maxfield Parish are evident in my work. But an artist’s own experiments, travels, encounters and recollections are what forge his/her artwork. Freedom infiltrates my brushstrokes, and is a reaction to the wonder, pain, comedy and terror I imagine while I’m trying to create logical and peaceful reflections.

Instead of traveling out to new landscapes and people, I’m playing it safe and working in my studio painting abstracts. These paintings exist through my naturalist upbringing but are not confined to a naturalist’s representation or rules.

I am a student and a teacher of life drawing. I prefer to work with pen and ink and watercolor when painting nude models. The life drawing collages you see in my inventory are paper cut from life studies overlapped with paper cut from abstracts. Though more playful in spirit, these collages are reaching for a kind of gravitas through layers of imagery without preconceived ideas. Max Ernst’s “…chance meeting of an umbrella with a sewing machine on a dissection table...” is a reference that sums up this method of collage quite well.