Paintings & Drawings

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I am a politically motivated visual artist who makes non-representational mixed media that combine my love of words and images.

I am an artist who does not believe that life, and therefore art, is a spectator sport. I am informed by the theater. You don’t lean back in a theater seat and say, “Entertain me.” For the actors to do their jobs well, the audience has to be just as involved as the actors in order to give something back for the actors to respond to. Nor do you walk into a gallery and just look at paintings on a wall. Pictures are something you engage with. So, put down the damn phone.

I make things; I don’t make representational images of things even with a camera. The picture is the thing I make. In that regard, I need to see the hand of the artist and the mark of the tool. I don’t value polished (sorry Jeff Koons!) I value the materials I use and what they can do. I value spontaneity during the creative process for what it allows the materials to reveal, and I value ambiguity for raising questions in the viewer’s mind.

Therefore, I am inspired and influenced by street art. Decay. Torn wallpaper in an abandoned house. Tarnished mirrors. Tattered posters glued to a wall. Graffiti art on freight cars. Paint rags. The seemingly haphazard/purposeful/spontaneous nature of paint buildup in an art studio sink...

...memory, remorse, and anger. Death, tombstones, and graveyards...

...science and technology, nature, and politics. And advertising.