Worlds
This series uses background images appropriated from NASA. For this sequence, I use the landscape of Mars. Eerily beautiful, with unnatural color enhancements, these landscapes show us real places which are only possible to view virtually. The landscapes are very tactile with undulating sands or dramatic impact craters. The black “M” glyphs are a modification of an Old West style font symbolizing the new frontier. The rendering of the figurative element is reminiscent of certain Renaissance painting having mannered gesture and chiaroscuro. The proportions of the canvases built for this series are the same as that of the computer screen, which has become an inescapable part of my daily experience.
Aerials
This category is divided into two parts—Industrial and Figurative.
Industrial: The sources of power in developed nations are destructive to the environment, a fact that unfortunately, is seemingly invisible to many. A twisting viewpoint may suggest the precariousness of our existence on “Spaceship Earth”. Ominous black crow-like shapes are portents of a dystopian future.
Figurative: This series was inspired by a period of frenetic activity and several plane trips resulting in an intense feeling of displacement, while gliding endlessly onward. The figure fragments help to emphasize this idea. The aerial landscape backgrounds reference satellite photos. These were chosen for their beauty, yet they also point out man’s incessant impact on nature in various geographic locations. We can be virtually anywhere thanks to technology. In some of the pieces, space twists away from the figure. The golden shapes have typographic as well as personal symbolic associations. This series also uses a canvas size that shares its proportions with a computer screen.
Grasses
Some older paintings express an early interest in landscapes. Repetitious, featureless, grassiness, provides a soothing softness against blank or cloudy skies These are all highly stylized, fantasy grass-scapes, painted from memories and dreams. While there is no figurative element in any of the paintings, each one is somewhat theatrical in that they are like stage-settings—basically flat swaths of grass against skies which create distance. Unlike more recent work, the proportion of the canvas has no meaning other than to facilitate a pleasing composition, usually based on a simple convex or concave shape on the horizon line.
Wonders
It’s difficult to know exactly what this page will be, other than a combination of ideas related to mythology, archaeology, life’s currents, and musings about mortality. There will be a mix of processes, including painting, fiber arts, and animation.
Objects
This series makes use of obsolete technology from the 1950s, which today is usually seen in the kitschy context of vacation postcards. This familiar format still has the power to create a sense of wonder and kindle childhood remembrance. An interlaced and specially layered ink-jet photo is affixed beneath a lenticular sheet to create a 3D effect. The plastic sheet is made up of a series of parallel convex lenses which transform the specially prepped photo to create the illusion of depth. This is sometimes inset into a gravel encrusted, painted shape, suggestive of an undersea barnacle covered object — worn, and changed by the power of water. In other series, the lenticular images themselves create a geometric form.
Prints
Limited edition prints and zines have natural and environmental themes. They may may be individual prints or be combined into a zine format.