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Sherlock Holmes enthralled me as a young reader with his powers of perception. His preliminary scolding of Watson for ‘looking’ but ‘not seeing’ has always stuck with me. He makes sense of everything he sees by threading together each minute detail to net and capture the big mystery. His portrait above my desk reminds me to keep sharp. My father is an acupuncturist, healing people since before I was born through the centuries old Chinese medicinal practice that aligns the body’s energy. My own work has developed a parallel commitment to vitality. He uses needles, I use brushes. Our life’s work shares a devotion to the eloquent flow of life.
The act of transforming a blank canvas into a relatable image is an action so fundamental to being human and at the same time so profoundly magical, I am enthralled daily with how descriptive a simple brush stroke can be. With it communicating not only the subject, but the energetic moment of inception as well. In my images the marks retain their own anonymity by not fading beneath layers and layers of realism. The dance of death between detective and villian, between health and sickness, occurs on my stage not with guns and germs, but with strokes that both describe and defy the form. I want the viewer to respond to the glossy soul-filled eyes as an access point into the swirls of paint that play between form and content. Masks II and XV comes from a series explicitly exploring this dynamic. A variation on the Rorschach test- watch as the face grows out of the coils of paint. Like Holmes, I too am engaged in raising the viewer’s powers of pereption. Recently reading Jonah Lehrer’s book Proust Was A Neuroscientist, I gained a renewed appreciation for Cezanne. The author writes “[Cezanne] wanted to give the brain just enough to decipher, and not a brushstroke more. If his representations were too accurate or too abstract, everything fell apart.” This fine balance is tenuous, suspenseful, and an amazing place to experience the human condition.
My goal is to work in a manner entirely contemporary and personal. To be part of the cultural conversation and do as much as I can to push our vision further. To create work that no one has seen before, yet have always known to be true. While being present to my adulthood in urban America, I am deeply connected to timeless study of humanity, nature, and the universality of our shared mythology.