A LITTLE INFORMATION ABOUT ME

Self after (lots of) Wine, 2007 oil on canvas 48x48

I am not sure if the average viewer, art enthusiast or even a great number of artists know the passion, the pleasure and pain it takes to truly be a painter. I am not saying that other artists don't possess the imagination, dedication or skill to create beautiful things, but there are few of us who truly live to experience the paint. Not all feel the pleasure of a brush gliding across the canvas and the excitement as that brush's mark on the canvas begins to end. A story was just told with that stroke, and thousands more are ready to be told at that very moment. Have they all experienced the beautiful accidents we call home on a long winter night spent freezing in the studio? Do they appreciate the beauty of that moment forgetting all other troubles? What about the smell of oil it as it permeates the air, or drips in gobs on your clothing and shoes in the heat of the moment? It is intoxicating. I live for the visual exchange of color and light and movement; for the explosion of passion that confounds reason for the sake of composition or message; for the blind fury of mark making on big canvases; to scream messages through imagery. It is beautiful. The end results are images fantastically broken and torn yet satisfied in their hyper-collaged existence by process and passion. Because of all this the process is more important to me than the end result… because the act of creation often trumps the imprint. That is where the value is found in my art.

Our process of memory dictates an infinite number of images compressed into seconds of internal vision, interpretive through emotion and complicated in reason, or relative madness, to our mind. Within each and every one of these synapse moments there exists an exquisite mixture of humor, sadness, excitement and exhaustion. An infinite surplus of these little noticed narratives awaits our recounting and people struggle with these recordings seeking to persevere and pleasure ourselves with such happenings in ways that I feel quantifies us as both mammal and human. I observe, interpret and discuss these possibilities through baser imagery, color, line, movement and composition. The imagery moves, strengthens and dissects as it is encompassed by the compound realities in each painting...in the end relying on strength of composition to petition for its distinct visual voice. These are images fantastically broken and torn yet satisfied in their hyper-collaged existence by languages of memory compromised by time.