My paintings and drawings are a response to the cultural and spiritual idea or stereotypes of beauty. The paint surface typically becomes very visceral using oil paint, stand oil, oil bars, and beeswax and this is foil to the spiritual intent of the work. One plays off the other in that what commonly might be expected in a spiritual context a serene style becomes very physically painted scraped, repainted and reworked to the death and rebirth of the painting through the process.
A new direction of ideas and ways of working has been influenced by Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures that seem to marry the physical with the mystical. For example in “Broken Dreams” references are made to the past in the fractured vine entwined sculptural images, toppled Roman heads that allude to glory and beauty vanquished. In another one of my paintings “Tinker” a roughly yellow painted contour line of a seductive Tinkerbelle- a Barbie–like stereotype of beautiful woman is overlapping a classical line-painted Venus image of which both are imbedded in a mysterious landscape of abstractly rendered foliage. This is my attempt to draw attention to our assumptions and misconceptions of what beauty is or should be. This exploration of contemporary images juxtaposed with historical images of “beauty” fascinates me. There is not necessarily a preconceived idea of what the paintings will look like they more or less evolve. “Ohhh Lucrezia” is one of several my “painterly” renditions of a Bronzino portrait painting,“ Lucrezia Panciatichi,” where she seductively stares out at the viewer.
The Vesuvius Portraits:
There was a shift in my work due physical constraints, emotional events and spiritual revelations that I had encountered. I lost my studio space, which forced me into a position of having nowhere to construct my large paintings. This along with some travel experiences has led me to create more drawings on a variety of surfaces. I have always drawn a lot. But drawing for me has always remained private- either securely hidden like a diary in my numerous sketchbooks or pinned to my studio walls for me alone. With the loss of my studio I was forced into cramped quarters in a basement. Out of desperation to make art and having been displaced I found a new (smaller) way to release the artistic pressures. I have experienced numerous losses in relationships over the past seven years and I think I was now seeing the effects of those losses. Faced with mounting pressures of life I felt like the volcano, Vesuvius, waiting to explode. Consequently I began doing brush and ink drawings on a ream of old stained found paper approximately 22”x30.” The drawings were executed in a stream of consciousness one after another, drawing and stacking them in the confined 8 foot by 8-foot space. I had no way to really see them. They consisted of numerous self-portraits, Vesuvius, John Kennedy, TV, random mark making, and family. They seemed disparate yet connected. Given an opportunity to show the drawings I gathered forty them, created during the 40 days of Lent. I wasn’t quite sure how they would look as a group but the idea of multiples and narrative was intriguing to me. Some drawings probably could stand-alone but they seem to work best arranged in some sort of “text, “book” or “narrative.” They can be more immediate compared to my paintings. Some people write prayer journals. Maybe these drawings are prayer drawings for me. I now have a new studio space but continue to explore the small scale as well as large installations of multiples.