Artist’s Statement

My artwork represents a longstanding belief in the possibility of translating human experience and feeling through the raw materials of painting. For quite some time I have been probing an artistic vein in which naturalistic forms shape-shift inside an abstract color space. The figuration is rooted in the human body, and more specifically, the links between brain and viscera. The physicality of working large allows the body to override the brain; only then does the door open to serendipity. When successful, the imagery and the materials combine to create a psychological and emotional charge with the viewer.

I don’t think of myself as a figurative painter, and yet figuration clearly looms large in these paintings. Indeed, this body of work belongs to an ongoing series titled “Twisted Figures”, a play on both the literal meaning of twisted (coiled, torqued, wrung) and the non-literal (warped, unstable, abnormal). I’m not interested in depicting literal narratives, but I am interested in the potential for metaphor. I think of these paintings as of the body and embodiments of… They are very physical in their making, visceral in appearance, and suggest a figure under intense stress, embattled, and thus very much of our world., ironically, it is as if this recent body of work prefigured the debilitating ischemicstroke. I suffered in July2022, triggered by a blood clot that formed in my right carotid artery which effectively rent the internal symmetry of my body, creating a misalignment and internal torque of muscles and nerves, whenIaskedmyself  the question,“how might this traumatic eventinfluencemyartwork?”, I realized, in retrospect that the paintings. I had already made in the l lead-up to the stroke in the waning years andmonths of the pandemic were alreadyan  accurate representation of my new physical reality!