Statement

The primary motivating factor in my work is the manifest nature of desire. Art that is ultimately significant bespeaks desire. It functions to symbolize eternal desire; standing above all transient systems of meaning even as it helps to construct them. Desire sweeps away all systems of judgment as inadequate.

The desire to know and touch the unknown and the unnamable was fanned into flames when I read the work of Julia Kristeva. Her essays on the power of horror and the semiotic and symbolic realms gave impetus to a renewed vigor in abstract imagery in my work. This interest continues through the consistent and thorough investigation of the painted surface.

The art historian and critic Donald Kuspit has informed my work regarding the nature of imagination, the concept of the absurd, and its relationship to our cultural and psychological appropriation of identity. The shaping of identity through idiosyncratic form and the "will to novelty" has reformed the way I turn the external experiences of my life into internal ones. These internal realities manifest themselves through the process of painting. It is in this context that I explore the disclosure of the inseparability of pleasure and reality.

These two new bodies of work continue the exploration of the relationship between pleasure and reality in the context of memory, beauty, darkness and spiritual maturity by embracing iconic forms as the need arises. A large aspect of this process is the relationship between the power of the land and impulse. Many of the forms exist in a strange space where they hover, searching for a resting place; a place to belong, a place to be, a place to become. They move, float and hover. Some travel in groups. Some travel alone. Others gather in groups over a place they cannot or will not connect with.

New meanings are generated when iconic forms re-contextualize each other. Apples become a continuous body of knowledge, each without privilege. A red box is disturbingly out of place. A man leaps. Two towers blaze red with rage. A heron in mid-flight is self realized. It only takes a moment.