As a figurative artist, I am dedicated to honoring the tradition and craft of painting while forging a unique and highly personal style.
Thematically, my work is rooted in the existential unease which arises from the tension between the need to preserve the individual self, and the desire to overcome separateness. My paintings often feature a single figure in a self-consciously isolated environment, or multiple figures who exist in close physical proximity and yet are separated by a vast emotional distance. While often placed in introspective, self-absorbed, or guarded postures, the figures are nonetheless exposed and vulnerable, laid bare to scrutiny. While addressing the predicament of irreconcilable isolation, the paintings also reflect an acknowledgment of the ultimate primacy of the individual, the inviolate and unique self.
Throughout my creative process, I am primarily concerned with technical and formal matters such as draftsmanship, anatomy, composition, palette, spatial relationships, etc. Invariably, drawing is the fundamental basis for all of my work. Each painting undergoes extensive transformation during the slow meticulous process of its development, starting out rather loose and general and becoming steadily more refined through each layer. The image mutates and evolves, often changing in ways that I could not have foreseen initially.
Although representational, my paintings are not necessarily intended to portray specific people, events, or circumstances, nor are they designed to convey specific narrative content. Instead, they retain an element of calculated ambiguity which heightens the mystery of the pictures and precludes them from being identified with a specific time, place, or situation. While the paintings may be realistic to a certain degree, they are not simply depictions of recognizable imagery, but rather are carefully-arranged cohesive formal constructions in which all the pictorial elements are deliberately designed to relate consistently and satisfy my own sense of balance, harmony, and completeness.