Artist's Statements

2001

The contemporary world is presented to us in fragments - in film clips, replays, and computer images many of which are commercial. Popular idols are mixed with serious events. Distant geographical affairs are sequenced with advertisements. Sex and violation are in both the real world and the fabricated world of popular culture.

This environment tends to blur the distinction between actual and altered images and frequently trivializes the former. It also places the viewer within this world of images and empowers him/her to participate. Geographic space and perspective are obliterated. The viewer can appear on TV or video himself/herself. The viewer can change his/her image with makeup, clothes, tattooing and even surgery. He/she can invent a persona and transmit it by computer throughout the world. It is the artfulness and deceit by which images are created and selected that interests me.

By simple processes, rolling or brushing paint, photocopying various images, and transferring the emulsion images from photographs, I wish to demonstrate that personalities can be created from a multitude of sources, real and reproduced, and placed in a context which seems actual.

2002

We live at a time when concern for physical appearance is paramount. Bodies have been redesigned according to fashion and to cultural icons. Ornaments, tattoos and surgical modifications have been employed to make the changes and digital imagery has been used for the presentation of the new look. My drawings show figures, single or grouped, which have been created with a "cut and paste" technique using ordinary materials: pencil and charcoal, photocopies and copy powder, and collaged paper. My intent is to underscore the crudeness of altering the body in contravention to the increased sophistication of disguising the alterations by cosmetic surgery, digital software and ornamentation. My sources include actual models, photographs of models from magazines and, occasionally, appropriated images of recognizable personalities, all of which underlie the drive to modify our bodies.

2005

My works in this show have been created using Polaroid emulsion transfers, both large and small, as well as elements of collage and drawing. To me, the emulsions are like skin, an imperfect cover or integument. In our fascination with the image and appearance, we can place our skin in different ways over ourselves as in these images, all of which are of the same person. We can also place our skin over the image of another regardless of age or gender, as well as over an icon. The choices vary as we remake ourselves repeatedly to fit fashion and mood.

2008

In defense of the solitary image: The human brain and eye are capable of creating a memorable world based upon the images(s) presented by a single canvas, panel or piece of paper. The implication of narrative, the presence or absence of color, the ambiguity suggested by the arrangement or elements in the composition…all classical features of painting…are more likely to transfix the viewer than are moving images or multiple objects in an environment. The emotional experience of the surrounding environment or of the film (video) can be exciting but, frequently, it is a single object or the still frame which is implanted in memory. My intent is to continue using the two dimensional surface to produce images which cannot be overlooked, which continue to puzzle or disturb, and which remain in the mind and recall of the viewer because of the reaction they generate.