STATEMENT

My current works are mixed media assemblies to the extent that cotton string, ripped canvas, inks and pencil are mixed with acrylic paints and media (the media). I typically work flat on unprimed canvas or paper using wet techniques evolved from my early watercolor painting. I build several paintings at a time, working in both opaque and translucent layers, juggling partial to full drying cycles.

I intentionally want the media to express what it is. I consider raw canvas an intrinsic part of a piece, rather than a static secondary surface. Ripped canvas and cotton string are also applied with the media to create subtle relief and dams. I am fascinated with how the media can be applied and moved on canvas wet and dry. I often apply wet media in layers. As a result paint and media are both pre-mixed and post-mixed.

I rarely use brushes to apply and move the media. My application “tools” are squirt bottles, spray bottles, and eye droppers. I’ll use sticks, household items and random tools to move the applied media. Gravity, airflow and water-acrylic chemistries are primary collaborators, contributing predictable and unpredictable results. It is fascinating to observe the wet media as it flows, blends, jumps and bleeds. I am constantly tipping, shaking, and flipping a canvas and hitting areas with more water. Pencil is often used as a throwback to my drafting days for laying out borders and dividing a surface.

As much as media, materials, and physics are revealed, I endeavor to obscure references to a specific message, person, place or thing. I imagine my works, abundant in color and subtle in texture, parallel music that abandons lyrics for instrumental compositions of bold notes and layered rhythms. One piece begets the next. The works are not arbitrary, they follow a pattern. The “instruments” are generally the same and there is always a degree of improvisation. I hold loosely organic shapes and patterns in check so the compositions are something or somewhere almost recognizable. Compositions may trigger an image or idea of “what the painting is about” but I want to leave it to the viewer to construct their own interpretation, informed by their experiences and narrative. This is the game I play with a willing audience; one that has no wrong answers and is not influenced with figurative references and subjective titles. My works are complete when shared with and observed by others.

Some of my most eloquent viewers are children, unburdened, relatively uninformed, and unafraid to say what they see and feel. Accordingly, one of my favorite (young) observers in the universe repeatedly asks me, “Are you a gown-up or a kid?”. The answer is always a simple “Yes!”