The figure is the starting point and lodestone for
my work. Divorced from explicit narrative context or traditional
portraiture, the figure
can become an open-ended format for discovery, a jumping off point
that allows for virtually limitless variation and invention. My
paintings draw from a particular strain of artistic thought that
focuses on
the primacy of psyche or ‘presence’ in the work, the creation
of which provides meaning for, and sense of relation to, the work.
In confrontation with the past and articulated through the lenses
of history, mythology, religion, literature, and ultimately, the
uncertain nature of the human condition, my work strives for a median
between
the hieratic and the intuitive/expressive.
Through a number of means, from brushed and drawn line and tone
to intentional and associative ‘accidental’ applications
of paint, my paintings suggest heads and figures that are often
revealed only partially or in a fragmented state. In some paintings,
single
figures and heads are captured in an unsettled state of deformation
and reformation, while in others, multiple figures are implied,
overlapping and ambiguous, inextricably bound together.