STATEMENT
Even in ruin and abandonment there is renewal and rebirth, an intricate paradox of decay and regeneration. Within these frozen moments of painting, sculpture and prints, my wish is that the viewer may pause and reflect upon these ongoing cycles of physical and spiritual evolution, which spring from hope, and are in play all around us.
PROCESS AND INTENTION
The mixed media sculptures:
The delicacy in the extremities of the compositions contrast and compliment the dense center cores of the pieces, creating complex rhythmic counterpoints suggesting growth and regeneration. Observation from a more objectified distance suggests organic objects pulled from the earth. A closer, more intimate analysis reveals man-made refuse entwined, emerging, abandoned. The eye can contemplate the scale of man to nature, and consider that even in ruin and abandonment there must be renewal and regeneration, creating an intricate paradox of decay and evolution, and even in this frozen moment meditate upon the ongoing cycles of physical and spiritual rebirth. The surfaces are treated with chemically oxidized metallic paints to give them a sense of found permanence, suggesting a hybrid born of necessity. The oxidizing process introduces a random chemical evolution that mirrors the seeming spontaneity in the organizational essences of these combines. When casting the constructs in bronze, though detail must inherently be lost, what is gained is the mysterious sense of timelessness unique to the lost wax process. The “bows” in these pieces imply tension, movement, and sound. They are the gestural lines of the compositions, providing an elegant path of movement for the eye and suggesting conduits of growth and possibility. They also suggest vulnerability, impossibility, and fragility in strength, the embodiment of the omnipresent life-force that animates material manifestations, an energy that at any moment could be uncoiled or broken, and its vitality released to take on a new form.
When given a chance to pursue their own logic, their own dream, the materials of these sculptures, abandoned by Man and Nature, never fail to give birth to something new. It's really an evolutionary process grounded in hope.
The digital images:
The Spiritgraphs are a result of exploring photographic images of the sculptures through digital manipulation, searching for the elusive territories of essence and spirit. There is the sense of the idealized, the prenatal, the unformed, and again, scale is ambiguous. Are we observing with a clinician’s gaze through a microscope at some tiny, teeming life-force, or are we absorbing some phenomenon vast and distant unfolding before us in an incalculable and undefined expanse? Either way, these images serve to transform the rough physicality of the sculptures into ephemeral objects of shimmering quicksilver, for us to contemplate in an internal space of reflection and stillness.
The Broken Paintings:
When I complete an acrylic painting on slate, I break it and reassemble it, a process sometimes I have to abandon when the piece will not or cannot come back together. Why do I break the paintings? To depict the tensions created by the often violent and unwelcome interruptions of the physical world into our interior landscapes, those inner refuges we hold close to us and try to inhabit in secret peace. So we pick up the pieces and carry with us a broken image of that shattered perfection, those moments, feelings and memories in our hearts and minds, no longer perfect, but somehow still whole, in a new, fragile, and imperfect way.
The carved edges and random surfaces of the slate act to inform and suggest the nature of the compositions while simultaneously infusing the paintings with a sculptural weight that compliments the visual content. The physicality of the slate itself reconfirms the object-ness of the piece, its presence as an actual piece of landscape, as well as its functionality as a ground for paint.
Although the images themselves seem vast and filled with wonder, I wish the physical experience with the viewer to be on a small, almost intimate scale, a visual oasis already broken and healed, a veil already rent and mended, where the mind’s eye may choose to rest, refresh, restore, and dream again for wholeness and completeness. In these pieces I strive to conjure a landscape of deep primordial beauty, a rough world at peace with itself, where roots run open along the surface, where light and matter find equal weight.