My large-scale assemblages on canvas and paper are a meditative exploration of the hidden machinery beneath all things. I use the body as an entry point to explore the worlds within me. The questions I ask are who am I, who was I, and how are we all connected.
Each painting is a portal into a vast, ambiguous space. The work examines the boundaries of understanding and our shared connection with the primitive, the mythic, the imagined, and the feared. Through a process of constructing, obliterating, erasing and reforming, images take on sculptural qualities and give birth to unexpected meanings.
Shape is primary, and I distill information until it is simple, powerful, and visceral, like a vivid dream whose meaning is hidden. Materials such as screws, bolts, steel hardware, and incinerated car parts are attached, suggesting a landscape built with tension, held together by the things that bind us. Each artwork is a shape unto itself, part of a whole, layered color and line pasted together until image and substrate read as one thing. Drawing serves as the incubator and base layer for my assemblages.
I work from my own photographs, trying not to impose my will on the process. Though I start with an intention, where I end up is often quite different. I paint with worn down brushes, digging into the surface, sanding it all back, trying to coax a 2D image into a 3D dimension. My art is circular, as I reimagine and incorporate the same imagery again and again.