Artist Statement :: 2012

Skin is a barrier, skin is a conduit. Skin is quite literally how we interface with the world, and it is the subject of my current series' Flesh & Biters, highly detailed oil paintings of the surfaces of my own hands and mouth. The perspective ranges from close to extreme close-up and the scale keeps pace as these anatomical bits are represented at 100's of times their actual size. Seen from this vantage point, the images begin to lose their objective meaning suggesting broader interpretation such as topography or high-level cartography. The work addresses issues of consciousness, presence, and the disappearance of touch in the increasingly digital landscape of contemporary culture. In paintings that swing from hyper-realism to near abstraction, I explore the vulnerability and vitality of this human body and the dual nature of what it means to exist in a finite, physical state.

Technology informs my work from both a practical and theoretical standpoint, and it is a primary theme in my sculptural works Better Living Thru Chemistry, a series of brightly colored glass and mixed media capsule-shapes embossed with text messages. Inspired in equal parts by the insidious presence of social media in contemporary culture and the simultaneous rise of direct - to - consumer pharmaceutical marketing, the work pokes fun at the alternately amusing and depressing correlations between the two phenomena as both are employed to over-simplify the human condition and expedite contentment. With titles like IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) and ((H)) (big hug), the works call attention to the absurdity of expressing such things in 140 character messages composed in a format that does even not lend itself to the use of punctuation let alone heart-felt sentiment.

Inspirations include the following artists, individuals and figures of fiction:
Phillip Guston, David Lynch, Diane Arbus, Billy Pilgrim, Robert Smithson, Samantha Stevens, Milan Kundera, Pablo Picasso, The Rolling Stones, John Coplans and Robert Mapplethorpe.

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A few biographical details: Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I studied painting and art history at S.U.N.Y. Purchase and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and received my BFA, with honors, from the Massachusetts College of Art & Design. In 1997, I moved from Boston to NYC where, in an odd bit of serendipity, I landed on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, exactly 1 block from the first American home of my immigrant grandparents.

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