My work explores the ambivalence that grows from contradiction. What happens to us when the familiar becomes unfamiliar? I have explored this theme through sculpture and paintings.
My work evolves from memories. The sculpture is based on architecture and has a stage-set quality to it. The paintings are based on old snapshots from the 1940’s and 1950’s, when film was slower and people posed stiff and self-conscious, uncomfortably aware of an audience. The sculpture exists absent of people; the figures in my paintings exist without the anchor of architecture.
All my work asks the viewer to look at the dis-ease of the image or object before them. The paintings especially are direct, and disturbing in their directness. I have chosen to use a traditional format for the paintings (portraiture and full figure portraiture) with the idea of self-examination in mind.
My objects all use traditional building materials – wood, drywall, and the construction materials that surrounded me growing up. My paintings are oil-stick, or oil-pastel, and are comprised of many layers of color. The layering of paint builds a highly textured, almost sculptural surface. I am in love with the lushness of paint.
