ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I have always been skeptical of the notion that only a small percentage of us are artistic. To me this implies
that there is something uncommon or even unusual about someone who creates art. We tend to forget that art
is a legitimate form of communication, one that existed long before written language. It is the expression of an
idea in the form of a visual interpretation, where the viewer engages with the subject not analytically, but
emotionally and instinctively. Successful communication is the transfer of an idea from one individual to
another without distortion or misinterpretation. This rule holds true for all forms of communication. This is not
to say, of course, that there is no room for mystery and investigation, for these are the playgrounds where artist
and viewer meet.

Like Claus Oldenburg said, "I am for art that does something besides sit on its ass in a museum". To be
successful a piece of art must relate an important and relevant message through a visual form that compels
the viewer to engage with both its physicality, and the message embodied within. It should impact everyone
who legitimately engages it. The portrait/self portraits and landscapes in my latest body of work represent a
character and time operational only in a space in between an insinuated memory and an uncertain fiction. To
begin to understand the characters and setting of this scheme requires the viewer's engagement in the
characters story, and the processing of the immediate, yet ineffective information jumbled together in this
display. Repeating iconography, loosely linked at best, seem to suggest an event, a place, or a reason for all
of this. The gaps in memory, which we immediately and unconsciously try to decipher, suggest a narrative in
which all of this exists. Sometimes we can see a portrait, perhaps separated into layers, sometimes only a
stain remains, and sometimes nothing at all. Attempts to hold all of this together, both physically (tape,
staples, glue), and metaphorically (repetitive imagery and text) begin to over step their bounds – the act of
recovering and rebuilding now inhibit and alter the content, as the act of recalling a half forgotten memory does
to it's truth.

The materials I incorporate include traditional and digital printmaking, photography, and book arts - all
informing and migrating into one another. Using appropriated images from popular culture and historical
records, collaged landscape backdrops, and a distortion of the subject matter through manipulated layers of
printing (xerox copies and transfers, inkjet and photoplate printing, lithography, woodcut, intaglio, and
photography) until the final result has lost its original context. They are then reappropriated into a carefully
constructed alternative actuality.