A R T I S T   S T A T E M E N T S

I make oil paintings and glass and mixed media sculptures.
For reasons unknown to me, my work is on the short list of references for English and Australian high school curricula. Over the past decade I have been contacted by teachers asking permission to reproduce my work and numerous students wishing to interview me about my process and path to becoming an artist. Below is one such interview from an a-level art student in London. I think this may be more interesting than any other bunch of words that I could put together as context for my work. Her questions (in bold) focused on my Cherry Biter paintings.

What inspired you to make the series 'biting’?
The color red was my jumping off point. Initially, as arbitrary as it may sound, I simply wanted to make red paintings. I started brain-storming, trying to think of subjects that are intrinsically red. Answers abounded but mouths first, and then cherries, really resonated for me in light of my ongoing fascination with physical experience, especially in a historical era characterized by the decline of touch due to our increasingly digital culture.

Why this sense?, why close ups + warm colour palette?
Regarding color, see above. As for this sense, these paintings are about multiple senses: the taste of the cherry, the immensely gratifying feeling of crunching a firm, ripe cherry in your teeth, the satisfaction of hunger-all of it. At the end of the day these works depict hedonism: uncomplicated sensual pleasure and nothing else. The tight crop in this and all of my work enables me to be very specific.

Benefits behind the series biting?
It was a huge departure from the work I’d done before it so creatively it was a massive breakthrough. I really honed my tolerance for painting fine detail articulating the lips and tongue, something I had trouble cultivating the patience for prior to this series. And, this work has been included in two museum exhibitions and has sold well.

What materials used and why?
I work with oil on canvas almost exclusvely. It’s luscious color and consistency are ideal for expressing these visceral, sensual subjects. Oil painting wet-on-wet is a tight-rope act for sure, but the gorgeous “accidents” that show up in the juxtaposition of painterly marks and colors sliding apart and meeting provide brilliant flashes of pure joy that more than make up for the arduous task of wrangling this unruly substance into recognizable imagery.

What artist inspired you to create this series?
The Cherry Biter idea just popped into my head. As ridiculous as it may seem, I was not situating this work within the context of art history, contemporary or otherwise. That said, I have forever been influenced by a professor whose enthusiasm for the Abstract Expressionists bordered on obsession. The way he talked about paint and gesture, the visceral nature of creating in this wild and life-affirming manner, embracing chance... that has underpinned my approach to painting since day one. But in general, I am motivated more by ideas and, in this work especially, sensations. Additionally, although I had not yet seen and therefore cannot claim to have been inspired by it, the work of Marilyn Minter shares a lot visually and conceptually with these paintings. Other than Minter, Warhol comes to mind, maybe James Rosenquist too. I have been very inspired by photography, advertising and cinema too: The eery, vivid imagery in David Lynch movies, Diane Arbus and William Eggelston photographs, gigantic Calvin Klein underwear ads on the sides of buildings…these things speak to me - loudly.

How did you become an Artist? What is your story?
I've always loved making art. When I was a little kid it was determined before I can even remember that I had some kind of talent for it. I coasted on that through elementary school and high school, but when I went to college I was rudely awakened by a "bad" grade from a drawing teacher. He gave me a “C” (THE definition of mediocrity over here in America). I was aghast! Haha! Suddenly I was expected to really work at this thing that had come so easily to me. But ultimately that grade was a gift. And a sort of compliment too. Even though the work I did in that class looked pretty good, the teacher knew that I was capable of more and they let me know this by poking me where it hurts: in the ego! I got an “A” (the highest mark) in the second semester which felt good, but the lesson to push the boundaries of my abilities and to take risks was the more valuable prize.
/eom
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Below are some writings about individual projects.
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My BIOMETRIX works are oil on shaped-canvas paintings of human irises and finger tips framed in fussy gold leaf. Very recently I have begun experimenting with acrylic domes and convex glass on the iris pieces that can alternately read as a protective bubble or a replica of the cornea. Initially begun in response to the isolation and pensive watchfulness of the pandemic lockdown, the project combines humor and visual curiosity to produce a skeptical inquiry into the history of portraiture. Additional inspirations are the extraordinary images of deep space transmitted by the Webb telescope (a welcome sense of scale and perspective during a particularly stressful time here on planet earth!), my concerns about big data, the evolving sociopolitical fortunes of women in contemporary America and beyond, and my perpetual wonder at the strange beauty of what it means to exist in a finite physical state.

These paintings are essentially portraits-portraits of women, to be more specific. My process begins with a slightly awkward photo session, followed by an impatient flurry of mark-making and a long period of blurring and tweaking to produce a tight, but painterly image of a tiny, highly idiosyncratic detail of an individual person. Seen from such close range and removed from the context of the rest of the body, the rings and ridges of an iris or finger tip appear to me like a vast, otherworldly landscape. In reality, what I'm looking at is a collection of biometric data: bits and bites of biology freely provided to faceless corporations ostensibly for the convenience of quicker access to sensitive personal information. My decision to encircle such things in gold is a tongue in cheek gesture intended to elevate my work and my subjects, and to parody thusly enshrined institutional works and the literal displays of wealth and status that have appeared in portraits of the rich and pious throughout history. Additionally, I'm alluding to a parallel that I see between the value placed upon personal data and fine art as commodities, as well as the value bestowed upon or withheld from certain groups or individuals in contemporary culture. When I see frames like this in museums, I perceive them first and foremost as unsubtle signifiers of value, and secondly as taming or civilizing devices that serve to neutralize the wildness inherent in both artistic expression and physical life.

This work is a throwback to a series of paintings I did of the surface of my hands called "Flesh Fields" from the early 2010's. That work was my attempt to make the most literal depiction of touch that I could think of, a response to my growing awareness of what at that time was a relatively new phenomenon: the decline of physical experience in an increasingly digital culture. Obviously the pandemic exacerbated that trend bringing that work a renewed relevance for me that continues in 2024.
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CURRENCY These paintings of money started as a side note in my ongoing investigation of the assignation of value and cultural gravitas that is cross-pollenating between contemporary art, big data and specific demographic groups. After reading a sad/hilarious and absurdly long puff piece about the art dealer Larry Gagosian in the New Yorker last year, the title of which was ”Money on the Wall”, I laughed, I cried, I was inspired.
But they are also about luck. When I was a kid I had a recurring dream about finding money in a muddy crack in the sidewalk. I would reach in and pull out a handful of coins- but it would be endless.I did this over and over again. I had the same type of dream about vending machines and junk food, something I was bitterly deprived of in my home haha! When I was much older I started winning things, little lottery prizes and raffles, and finding real money like $20 bills on street, $100 at a subway turnstyle, and more and it changed the way I saw myself. It seems that I am lucky!
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PAINTINGS OF THE COUNTRY "America is not a place, it is a road." - Mark Twain

Evening in America, Night Tripper and Big Country are three related bodies of work through which I explore the mythologies and realities of the American landscape as seen from the perspective of a traveler, often at night. The settings hover between the built world and the natural landscape, and although no people are pictured, each composition preserves some residue of the human presence: a power line, a building, or simply the road itself. My intention is to take the viewer into the scene, showing just as much (or as little) sharp detail as the human eye and mind can process in person. The point of view and painting style reflect the fleeting nature of impressions, especially those formed while driving on deserted roads in low light.

Night Tripper is a series of small oil paintings of seasonally abandoned beach roads depicted at the liminal moment between dusk and nightfall. The title references the spooky alter ego of Doctor John and all that it implies about the ambiguity of twilight: it's equal potential for magic and danger. These paintings feature two spots on Cape Cod*: Route 6 at the Provincetown/Truro line, and a secluded route that leads to Head of the Meadow, a wildly beautiful beach in the National Seashore which featured prominently in an earlier body of my work entitled Platinum Sea, paintings of the surface of the ocean (2013-16). This work picks up where that left off, substituting the surface of the road for that of the sea, and following a circuitous journey through the strange, tattered and often charming back roads and scenic byways of America, an entire country that has itself been famously characterized as more of a journey than a destination.* *In 2023 a deserted 2 a.m. Palisades Parkway makes an appearance.

Evening In America, the title of my 2020 solo show at Lyons Wier Gallery in NYC, was intended to be both a literal description of the paintings in the exhibition which are all set in late afternoon or early evening, as well as a comment on the current state of the nation both at home and on the world stage. Conceived before the pandemic, but no less relevant now (perhaps more), the words reference Ronald Regan's re-election campaign ad that featured imagery of Americans starting their day in a bright sunny world behind the jingoistic slogan, "It's morning again in America".

Big Country is a series of oil paintings based on imagery gathered while navigating the US & Canada by motorcycle. These works explore the notions of "home" and "away", and how my sense of these things is impacted by my personal history, American mythology, and the rise of digital culture. But their primary subject is the visual experience of motorcycling, which is simultaneously fragmented and completely immersive. The world appears to me alternately in tiny half-blurred snatches glimpsed in in my rearview mirrors, and the unmatched 180 degree perspective afforded by a view unbstructed by the structure of an enclosed vehicle. The series' title references the artist Edward Avedisian's description of America, which appeared in his obituary in Hyperallergic in 2013. The full quote, "It's a big country, and the only thing keeping it together is television", struck me as hilarious and oddly consistent with my own impressions of these loosely United States (though one might be tempted to substitute "tik tok" for "television" at this point).

These are scenes from a road trip. The road trip is a present-day expression of the distinctly American values of rebellion, freedom and restlessness embedded in the national psyche by the country's founders, and later realized in the conveyance of the internal combustion engine. Recent technological advances have ushered in a new era that threatens this tradition. One of the unintended consequence of ubiquitous personal computing is a historic decline in the number of teenagers pursuing that most quintessentially American rite of passage: the acquisition of a driver's license. The rise of digital culture has rendered the physical distribution of people and goods less urgent at the very least, if not completely unnecessary. People are no longer isolated socially or professionally by geography because many jobs can be done remotely; texts and chat take the place of face-to-face personal contact. Conversely, the distinction between home and work becomes increasingly vague when one is constantly accessible. And when there is no centralized workplace, personal space and time is less clearly defined. In such a time, it is both refreshing and strange to drive around the small towns and natural wonders that dot back roads and byways, visiting places that have yet to be subsumed by big box stores and national chain restaurants. The reward is a front row seat on a very different America, one rife with odd and often charming, if somewhat shabby, idiosyncrasies.
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Better Living Thru Chemistry (BLTC) is a limited edition sculpture series consisting of candy-colored glass and mixed media capsule-shaped objects festooned with text messages, social media iconography and the language of pop psychology. Inspired in equal parts by the ubiquitous 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 enlisted to over - simplify the human condition and expedite contentment with a familiar recipe of instant gratification and seductive packaging.
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PLATINUM SEA is a series of paintings of fragments of the North Atlantic ocean centered on the elemental, physical aspects of this living surface. The ocean is described in a muted color palette made up exclusively of cadmium red, titanium white and indigo extra. Since color is not an innate quality to water, I try to keep it fairly neutral, bringing about subtle changes in "temperature" and tone through minute adjustments to the proportions of these 3 components. I adopt a perspective that is extreme, often bringing the composition to the brink of abstraction. Situational cues such as a horizon line or light source are intentionally cropped out. What remains is an unbounded section of sensual topography, the actual scale and orientation of which is unknowable and unimportant. This, combined with the essentially fractal nature of this subject matter, fosters an ambiguity that keeps the focus on the materiality of both the subject and the painting.

Throughout, I use my own digital photographs as source imagery. The technology enables me to capture a level of detail or moment in time that is not accessible through casual observation, and through careful editing I am able to identify and isolate events or phrases within the larger context that strike me as both intimate and universal, timeless and ephemeral. The end result is quite realistic, but I am careful to maintain a balance between a rich, lively paint surface and visual accuracy. I see my process as the perfect marriage between the potential for alienation to which I allude here in the first paragraph, and the total sensory submersion required to complete and appreciate this work.
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The (2003-2014, 2024) BOVINE PORTRAITS IN HEXADECIMAL HUE is a series of monochromatic oil paintings of cows. Through this humorous and loving take on the genre of portraiture, I explore themes of repetition, existentialism, vanity and the impact of digital culture on visual experience. Artistic inspiration includes, but is not limited to the work of Andy Warhol, Diane Arbus, and the spectacularly rendered visions of clergy and wealthy patrons by old masters such as Holbein and Vermeer.

Each painting begins with a headshot - a hastily captured image of the subject in their natural habitat encountered on motorcycle trips throughout the Catskill Mountains and lower Hudson Valley. That source image is then digitally edited and tinted with a single hue chosen from the 216 colors of the basic Web palette. The title of each painting includes the hex code for that color.

Initially inspired by a visit to a dairy farm in Buck's County, PA where I was mainly impressed by the size of these creatures, I quickly became captivated the facial "expressions" implied by anatomical idiosyncrasies such as long, luxurious eyelashes and heavy brooding brows that seemed to suggest a wide range of human emotions like fear, tenderness and vulnerability, even anger. Clearly this is projection on my part, one that is often shared by the viewer. But it made me think about how these creatures relate to the genre of portraiture. Historically, portraiture has been largely a tale of the very rich immortalized in self-important displays of wealth and power. In creating these works, I have elevated cattle, a traditional symbol of that wealth, to this same stature. Since embarking upon the project in early 2003, I have completed over 50 Bovine Portraits.