I am a painter, sculptor, furniture designer and illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York. I have decades of experience completing works and commissions in a variety of media, including: cast bronze; oils; acrylics; stained glass; wood, pen & ink and digital, to name a few. I draw inspiration from my own life and passions and the experiences of those close to me, as well as classical, modern and contemporary artists across a wide range of artistic and literary media.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Art is more than an adornment to our physical reality or an ornamental record of the past or present. It is a scope that allows us to look both outward and in, ahead and behind. It is the only arena in which every aspect of who we are, who we hope to become, and who we have been is simultaneously fused and disintegrated. In any work, the goal is to identify the barriers that permanently surround and contain us, and then deploy them against themselves. Our perceptions and experiences of life are constantly being colored and directed from countless directions, many of them attempting to exploit our experience and beliefs extractively; to use our energy, thoughts, efforts and resources towards some other exogenous end that we have no desire to pursue. In such an exploitative universe, it is easy to feel lost, overwhelmed and even desperate. The work of an artist in the Twenty-First Century is to allow the experiencer to feel something outside of the surface sensory reality that constantly bombards us, to create an energetic stream that runs forcefully counter to the current of utter distraction, coercion and removal that beset us.
My work is undertaken with an end towards piercing these confines. There is still infinite potential for beauty and discovery in our universe, and it is this wide open possibility that gives the experience of human existence its greatest value. All of my work represents a push to present this material world stripped of its grounding abrasiveness and the quotidian drabness of modern technological life, often juxtaposed with strong elements of allegory, dream and fantasy, in order to offer and lay bare the vast potential and alternatives that our intellect, perception and capacity to love and appreciate allow us, if only we are willing to grasp onto them with courage and faith.
