Collages
In my studio practice I use collage to provide a context and comment on the subject being depicted. Collage allows me to layer multiple images, each with a separate meaning, over the scaffolding of a drawing. The collage provides secondary meanings from text or images, which is integral to the finished work. I use materials from the subject’s world to create their likeness. This is a modern take on the Renaissance tradition of including iconography in portraiture to illustrate the subject’s attributes, such as books to signify education or tools to symbolize the subject’s trade or craft. Instead of using symbols, as a Renaissance painter would, I collage these portraits using materials and text from the subject’s environment or the popular press.
Paintings
I paint to find out what I think about the world; to discover the things I do not have words for. I savor the slips of the hand that express one’s unconscious feelings about the subject. I am interested in the conversation between abstraction and realism. My paintings explore the tension between what needs to be shown and what does not, the seen and the unseen.