ARTIST STATEMENT

I love to work with materials that move.  I love how I can move charcoal around on paper, the way the brush moves the oil paint on the canvas, and the way the clay feels in my hands when I am sculpting.  I am not a planner, I cannot see a painting or a drawing, before I begin, and though I somewhat plan the sculptures ahead of time, all of my works dictate to me what they become.  Each stoke of the brush is dictated by the one just before it.  For me, it is about the process, the color, the form, and most of all, the materials.  I love to experiment with new materials and new processes as it challenges me.

 My work is about just seeing things differently and the exhilaration of being totally free.  I believe that to love art is all about learning to see.  After all, Paul Klee once said, “Art is not about reproducing something that is already visible, but rather making it visible.”  Stella, when asked the meaning of his work, frequently replied that what you see, is what it is.  For me, I want my viewers to experience my art not how I see it, but how they see it.  It should be a personal experience that is different for each person.  That experience should be visually pleasing, happy, or even disturbing, but not empty.

I had a gentleman once ask me at an exhibit what my work was about, I asked him what he saw.  He replied, “Chaos!”  In that moment, he took my breath away, because I knew that he got it!  In these new pieces, I let myself go.  I have started working with AI, feeding hundreds of images of my work into neural networks.  Hours later, it produces newly interpreted images, which I then paint and reinterpret them yet again. It is an adventure in doing things I have never done.  The result is chaos, and it is a result I never want to let go of because we live in a world that is full of chaos and we must learn how to relate to it and fit in.