ARTIST STATEMENT
My work explores power dynamics. I have always been interested in the simplest of acts between beings that can result in friction, causing dramatically contrasting repercussions and results.
My artwork delves into these topics through the scrutiny of interpersonal relationships, visible responses to betrayal or disappointment, and exploitative behaviors.
My process of making art often combines traditional art materials with nontraditional substances, causing reactions in paints and inks on the canvas. This combining of often opposing media and substances furthers the idea of struggles on the canvas, while simultaneously challenging the distinction between high and low art.
PHILOSOPHY & INFLUENCES
Painting has had an enduring quality throughout history and I believe it will continue to in the future, beyond all of our current and evolving technology. Painting has a potency and a durability that can educate, persuade and create intense dialogue.
My work has always revolved around struggles and conflict in one form or another. Often the subject matter evokes this, but the interaction of the materials on my canvas often reveals that they are grappling, rejecting, amalgamating, or subjugating one another.
Painting engages me in a struggle with the canvas. Throughout the process, there are successes and failures, growth and setbacks, education and questioning. It forces discipline and ignites emotion.
From a young age I was intrigued by the sense of freedom coupled with brazenness that artists seemed to have. Experimenting and breaking traditional art rules was gratifying. I grew to love the idea that paintings age, change, and can ultimately fall apart over time. The cracks that form on the surface of a painting because linseed oil is forcing itself to the surface through old house paint, is much more interesting to me than something that is supposedly going to last forever.
The power of art and its ability to create environments and stir emotions fascinated me. I loved the first couple of Star Wars movies when they came out. I was captivated when I learned that the sets in the desert and the snow planet were giant paintings. The endless horizons, the sense of loneliness and foreboding, tempered by the potential of what was going to happen as the screen shifted, was so exhilarating. The idea that painting could do that made me think big and led to my having no hesitation about expressing myself through bold, giant, colorful paintings. Still to this day, when I sit in a movie theater before the movie starts, I look at the blank screen and imagine what I could do filling that giant canvas.
I feel a kinship with the post-war abstract expressionists and their sprawling, textured paintings. From the first time I saw a Jackson Pollock painting, it made sense to me. As I learned more about him and his history, I grew to love his mid-1940s work for Peggy Guggenheim even more than the drip paintings. I also love Lee Krasner and maintain that she was the superior painter in their relationship.
My true heroes are painters Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Like athletes or musicians, these artists are heroes to me because I strive, but cannot achieve what they do. I always have them in mind whenever I work, but I am always challenged to capture comparable representations of facial emotions or figurative stances buried between thick brushstrokes and thicker textures of paint extending to every edge of the canvas. I also connect to Kossoff’s references to how much he thought about paint throughout his days. Sculptors like Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti emulate painting in my mind. Moore’s smooth flowing continuous lines and Giacometti’s jagged inconsistent patches of form, while drastically different from one another, mimic the brushstrokes of painters.
I reject the idea that one type of art is more important, or “better” than another. The delightful obnoxiousness of early Peter Saul paintings and the boldness of Dieter Roth’s blunt pencil to paper drawings still excite me just as they did the first time I encountered them. At the same time, the 60’s and 70’s Fillmore and Haight Ashbury concert posters from Chuck Sperry, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse and others have also always spoken to me. The violation of every color theory rule is just as intriguing as is the fact that the lettering on these advertising posters is unreadable at first, or even second, glance. Viewers are forced to engage and spend time figuring out the message. Similarly, surf and skate art from artists like Jim Phillips and Clay Wilson has always warmed my heart with their irreverent, grotesque chaos. The interaction of fantastical monsters adorned with flowers, blades, flames and skulls who have snakes and vines crawling through their eye sockets seem like homages to masters like Hieronymus Bosch.
As for today’s world, despite the ubiquity of our screens, I think guerilla street art is one of the most powerful expressions rousing introspection and dialogue. Bridges, trains, tunnels, buildings, and other surfaces on our landscapes rival galleries and art shows as the true place to see unfiltered artistic expression and thought-provoking statements.
EXHIBITIONS
August 2021, Grover Beach, CA
Exhibition of New Works of Local Artists (Public Art/Electrical Boxes kick off)
2018, Grover Beach, CA
Stone Soup community art festival
August 2019, Grover Beach, CA
Public Mural leader
April 2019, Grover Beach, CA
Small Works Show Invitational Salon Exhibition
May-July 2017, New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA
Small Works Show Invitational Salon Exhibition
May-July 2013, New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA
Art Institute of Atlanta Faculty Show
November 2011-January 2012, Decatur GA
Small Works Show Invitational Salon Exhibition
May-July 2011, New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA
MOCA-GA Pinup Show
November 2009, Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta GA
The Hent Project Group Exhibition
December 2007, EyeDrum Gallery, Atlanta, GA
The Hent Project Group Exhibition
August 2007, EyeDrum Gallery, Atlanta, GA
The Way There Solo Exhibition
June-July 2007, Ferst Center for the Arts, Atlanta, GA
Small Works Show Invitational Salon Exhibition
May-July 2007, New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA
Decatur Arts Festival Juried Fine Arts Exhibition. (Awarded Best in Show)
May 2007, Decatur, GA
Exhibit Curator. Mental Climate: Works by GSU Drawing Students
April 2007, LimeLight Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Wren’s Nest Group Exhibition
April-May 2007, Atlanta, GA
Oil and Water Solo Exhibition
March 2007, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
New Voices Group Exhibition
September 2006, Troy Moore Library, Atlanta, GA
Decatur Arts Alliance Annual Member Exhibition
September 2006, Decatur, GA
Madison National Juried Show
August–November 2006, Madison-Morgan Cultural Center, Madison, GA
M.I.A.D. International Exhibition of Digital Art
July 2006, Venado Tuerto, Argentina
Small Works Show Invitational Salon Exhibition
May-July 2006, New Arts Program, Kutztown, PA
Castleberry Hill affordableART Market
April 2006, Atlanta, GA
Exhibit Curator. From Digital to Titian: Works by GSU Painting Students
April 2006, LimeLight Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Don’t Forget (Elephant Paintings) Solo Exhibition
December 2005, Ferst Center For the Arts, Atlanta, GA
This exhibition also featured in film Why Did I Get Married? Dir. Tyler Perry, 2006.
Eye Candy Juried Exhibition, Association for Visual Arts
November-December 2005, Chattanoga, TN
Decatur Arts Alliance Annual Member Exhibition
September 2005, Decatur, GA
Souvenirs Group Exhibition
June 2005, Bayeux, France
Marcia Wood Selects Juried Student Exhibition
April 2005, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA
Selected Presentations
Drawing Marathon. Your Piece of the Puzzle. October 2010. West Georgia University
“The Human Condition from the Visual Artist’s View: A Panel.” New Voices on the Human Condition Conference of the Georgia State University English Department September 2006. Panel Chair and participant