Artist's Statement

My goal is to create visual excitement—collages and paintings that can bring a whole room to life. Key to my art is a physical, often percussive rhythm, fluid line, and vibrant color. I love nuance and visual saturation—I strive to give my viewers so much to see in any one piece that they must take it in gradually, over time. Yet it's also my task to create a pleasing visual order. My pleasure as an artist lies in turning interesting accidents, ambiguities, and coincidences into a kind of musical phrasing, complete with harmony and dissonance.

There are two distinct currents in my works, the figurative or representational pieces in which there are recognizable objects and creatures, many of which I’ve cut out and saved for years, and the non-representational pieces, in which there are, at least ostensibly, none. In the latter, a dynamic, mutating dance of colors and rhythms is the story. Thus, the kaleidoscopic foliage and flowers in A Hint of Frost is all about the molten dance of colors and shapes we witness in our backyards every day almost without noticing. In the figurative pieces, many of them collages, an implied narrative often evolves. Toward the end of making the densely collaged rural land- and skyscape of Speaking of the Devil, I found the yellow demon with horns afloat on my studio bureau. The sassy dragon (saved for years on a bulletin board) and the birds had already been glued in. Did I dare at the last gasp add the yellow diablo chatting on his cellphone? How could I refrain?