Statement from the Artist

I'm very intrigued with the narrative qualities of painting and feel through that avenue, with the still life or the figure as the vehicle, I can explore and speak about culture, society and religion. I am channeling my recent work into two specific bodies: one being figurative in content and the other a collection of iconic still life pieces. Currently I am interested in arranging very traditional, mostly religious, symbolism within our cultures, unsacred contemporary language. By doing so I hope to communicate the origins traditional uses of representation and at the same time expose the detachment of our consumer culture from symbolic meaning and definition of content.

I find that the rural community in which I live has cultivated my interests in contemporary cultural translation of iconography and religious specific symbolism. The modernizing and secularization of religious icons and characters through western commercialism is interesting to me, when considering how art history, beyond technique, is significant to contemporary work. I draw some information from regional specific belief bases and the creation of denominations, theology, and doctrine by singular communities. By placing these observations and social studies within a somewhat surrealistic environment, they can interact and be discussed by the viewer in an anthropological manner.

Artistically my goal is to better understand the evolving context in which my work is being created and viewed. Realizing that the medium of painting has its own history and set of fundamental criteria, I can experiment with my work in a contemporary setting while still constructing from a traditional foundation. Artists like Giovanni Bellini, Titian, Vermeer, Caravaggio, and Jan van Eyck have tremendously influenced the content and technical evolution of my work. Contemporary painters John Currin, Wayne Thiebaud, Scott Fraser and Odd Nerdrum, video artist Francis Alys, instillation works from Jonathan Borofsky, and visual anthropologists like Jean Rouch are resources that I often examine in research for my work.