Painting has for me always represented both a mode of expression of the inner life and a way of understanding one’s relationship to the world. Of course, the two concerns are not only compatible, but indeed intertwined and interdependent. In that I consider my painting practice as a metaphor for personal experience (in truth a form of autobiography), a reflection upon my own path is frequently necessary, if necessarily difficult. I came to the focused study of painting by way of a wide-ranging exploration of many different interests and artistic disciplines, including photography, printmaking, and sculpture. All of these investigations were important in their own way to my development, but painting offered to me a deeper challenge than had any of my previous efforts.
For the past several years, I have endeavored to create a kind of unique pictorial world, predicated on interplay between abstraction and representation, whose nature becomes clearer to me as it evolves from picture to picture. The interplay between pictorial form and content is here symbiotic; as formal invention suggests or even necessitates content, while, in turn, content mandates formal and abstract solutions. I’ve come to understand that recent events on the world scene have strongly influenced my imagery. The pictures are far from overtly political, yet seem to have come to embody something of my unease with the world that I face, and that my daughter will inherit. Fundamentally, the content of my painting has become an attempt to find a place for myself in the world. Emotions like apprehension and anger, tempered with a kind of hopefulness have informed recent works. In the paintings, I confront both my identification with humanity, and my (sometime) dissatisfaction with it.
What is of the greatest importance for me in any given painting is to create a truthful image.
