Artist Statement

My work is figurative. Hieratic, Apocalyptic Monsters and Mermaids, Angels and Demons. Formed from the scrap heap of twenty first century life*, sifted through the sands of my conscious and unconscious mind. I am trying to discover the mythic figures of the new millenium, or uncover atavistic old gods like Cthulu and Quetzalcoatl.

My work is formal. Much of my work over the past two years has been done on an intimate scale. Images that could be held in one's hands and examined closely; relief prints, watercolors and hand made books. In my mixed media drawings, "Before the Show" and "Mother's Worry", I put down a primary layer of orange monoprinted gestural strokes, then blue relief prints of wood grain and abstract shapes before a final, figurative, layer of india ink dry brush. This layered approach allowed me to unearth the image, like discovering a hieroglyph covered stele during an archeological dig. The "Word Possum" relief prints were also done using a three step process. Instead of registering the different colored elements, I layed them down on the blocks spontaeneously, not always knowing how they would interact with each other untill after the print was pulled. This "close work" facilitated my exploration of personal iconography. Currently, I have increased the scale of the work, like the gouache and acrylic painting, “Holy Mountain”, to make the figures compete with the viewer for space, to make my myths real.

*tape hiss, prog rock album covers, exploitation film posters, third rate comic books with bad color separations, hand painted signs for hub-cap shops, air brushed portraits of the dead on black denim jackets, hair on the film projector’s lens.