artist statement

 There are three main conceptual threads that run throughout my work: A commentary on art history, a desire to allow the image to emerge in a dreamlike way, in order to manifest something unknown to me, and a meditation on the interface of “human” and “animal”.

I am a teacher. I teach drawing, life drawing and art history, and these disciplines shape my own work. When I look at the works of the great draftsmen of the past, it’s hard to resist the impulse to steal a particularly elegant contour or image – I want to feel that line in my own hand. So I haven’t resisted that impulse, and find that the images of the past have something to say to me, and weave them into my own pictures.

A blank surface is an opportunity to meet the unknown, and the point when the image begins to make itself is the most exciting part of the process. Allowing elements to emerge spontaneously doesn’t always work, but when it does, it becomes a kind of “dreaming awake”, and those works become my teachers, rather than my creations.

I have a great curiosity about that implied (and perceived) separation from nature, and carry much sadness about this primary form of alienation. I feel it in myself, and the images of animals are a way of grappling with it.

Whether in drawing or painting, the work is about chasing the spontaneous, gestural line – rendered before thought can catch up. As a process, drawing has a simplicity and immediacy that relates to poetry. A few lines have the potential to carry a lot of information.  My drawings are usually presented informally, and are hung like paper tapestries. Layered images and ghosts of previous drawings add visual texture and refer to a love of looking at pages full of scribbles and revisions.

 I intend much of my art to have a metaphysical aspect – they are made as offerings. We don’t know how the others we share this planet with perceive their lives – there are a multiplicity of realities, reflected in innumerable eyes. Another being’s interior life is a total mystery. In addition to the human figure, potential subjects are limitless, but the forms of birds and deer are often repeated – in large part because of a personal connection to them.

ANIMA/ANIMUS Artist Statement

This body of work began as an exploration of the archetypes of the Anima/Animus, or the inner masculine/inner feminine (as the psychologist Carl Jung described them), with an intention to create images that spoke to the “Hieros Gamos”, or alchemical marriage between these aspects of the self. I chose to symbolize attributes of these archetypes with stereotypical imagery: in particular, “self portraits,” ropes, and the wedding dress. I knew the approach was risky: it would be easy to interpret these images in the context of pop culture BDSM, “celebrity weddings”, or other tropes. I wanted to play with the motifs, and hopefully allude to other interpretations. Here, ropes connect, bind, slice and confine. Hair tangles tenderly or in snarls, and the dress is both social institution and fantasy.

 The drawings quickly become more idiosyncratic explorations: the man in a long white skirt is an image from my dreams, and one that invokes both my curiosity and confusion. Who is this figure? What lost aspect of myself does he represent? Allowing myself to “dream this dream forward” in the drawings was an interesting exercise.

 In addition to the inner psychological relationship of feminine and masculine aspects of the self, this series is also about certain difficulties of external romantic relationship: unrequited devotion, disappointment, loss, bewilderment, repressions, and expectations. It is also about the relinquishment and release of these emotions.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my male model, whose image bore the weight of these projections.