Statement

The importance of playing cannot be emphasized enough.  Though I take my “work” very seriously, at the end of the day, it is most important that I be free and playful with my subject matter and sense of color and craft.

The same goes for experimenting with new mediums, and rediscovering old processes.  There are simply too many skills in this world for me to learn, to limit myself to one discipline. Continuing to refine, continuing to stretch; re-discovering the world of fabric at the same time as I’m continuing (what I’m sure is a lifelong journey) to hone my painting skills, while also deciding to start gluing plastic things together in new ways; this is a juggling act to which I thrill.  Each genre enables and informs the other.  Since high school I’ve been plagued with a wealth of interests.  A proliferation that spits in the face of a world which craves expertise.  But I maintain: Better to be well-rounded.  It may take me longer to get to those benchmarks that seem to signal success, but so be it, in favor of having explored what I wanted, tried a million things, been willing to fail.

In my dreams I am happily haunted by various recurring images.  One thing I focused on subconsciously all last year was hands: curiously textured monster hands; hands that perform magical acts, menacing hands, misguided hands, hands clasped in religious devotion.  Admittedly, a little dream analysis would reveal: my waking hours are increasingly tinged with the fear of losing the ability to use them.  A little arthritis here, a freak accident there, and they’d be rendered useless.  As one of my greatest joys in life is making things with these two ends of my body, it seems a semi-justifiable fear.

Fantasy, both personally and as it relates to pop culture, keeps popping up as well.  Vampires and Zombies and tiny little inverted worlds.  The new sculptures I’m making definitely refer to popular fantasy trends, but are also aspiring to something more veiled and unknown; something up (as always) to the viewer.

My compulsive and therapeutic need for creation ends up bleeding into content.  Whether it’s a need for order, for classification and straight lines—or a desire for organics, fluidity, flexibility—the emotion finds its way into my abstract work. The tradition is certainly not mine alone; but the practice continues to amaze me in hindsight.