Artist Statement
My work hovers between the allure of painted illusionism and the pull of the flat surface. Recently I have been probing the tension between imagery created by pixels and that created by paint and brush. What began as an attempt to solve formalist demands and the conundrums of my training became the keystone that generated a lifetime of work. The conflict itself became my subject. Drawn to the seductive narration of mimetic picture making, I also accepted and accept its marginalized status, its alleged "impurity" — and so I seek in my practice to destabilize illusionism, to undermine, belie or somehow challenge its very delights.
This is true whether I am dragging a heavy paint loaded brush across a finely painted velveteen sofa in 1982, cutting off the illusory depths of a watery pool by shearing off the very surface it's painted on in 1991, or using my invented technique to paint details of detritus from a stricken landscape on a physically rough, cast plaster substrate in 2007. I am always in some way bringing realism and abstraction into collision, and negotiating the terrain between painting and sculpture.
Inevitably, this formal dichotomy unfolds deeper issues of content. The intersection of materiality and imagery lends itself to the creation of story, of metaphors with meaning. Specifically, I have been able to use my essential discourse about form to engage with the pressing issues of societal and environmental breakdown that are so meaningful to me.