The sources I draw on for my work have always been varied. They have, of course, evolved over time. When I was in graduate school I was focused on food. Specifically, people eating food or advertising based images and still lifes that were the antithesis of pop in their treatment. That is, they were recreated, not appropriated. Later in the 1970’s, I worked with images of simplified figures placed in narratives that dealt mostly with interpersonal relations. This work was sometimes interpreted as misanthropic and, occasionally, misogynistic. I was, however, very influenced by the early feminist movement, especially as regards the confessional aspects. This I incorporated into my aesthetic and it retains importance to me.

Later, in an effort to break down figuration and make it more formal I began to look into the pseudo sciences of physiognomy and phrenology. These, along with a poetic interpretation of ideas associated with synesthesia (mixing of the senses), cloning, and cosmetic plastic surgery led me to swirling near abstractions based on the human head. A reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, inspired by a desire to learn about historic literary sources related to genetic engineering, led instead to a preoccupation with themes having to do with Prometheus, from Aeschylus to Gide. These ideas about man and nature and man and God coupled with an ongoing interest in the human figure informed much of my work during the later 1980’s.

Around 1990 I developed a desire to expand my skills and vision and began a project of drawing a chance image daily from each page in a vast picture dictionary. The dictionary was eventually fictionalized, inflated, and thus distorted. The resulting paintings tested different approaches, techniques, and characters of images. During this process images of architecture became an interest and over time these were anthropomorphized and mutated into a humorous hybridized figuration.

All these previous concerns continue to play a part in my thinking as I construct the newest paintings and works on paper. These are largely concerned with ideas relating to interactions (serious, comical, sublime, poetic, and pathetic) between man and nature. The images vary but the anxiousness is intentional and supports the visual tension or humor. Image and abstraction are treated equally. Optimism and pessimism are balancing too.

June 2006