statement

I create visual imagery through the manipulation of fluid materials, mainly to achieve immediacy and directness.  In the act of mark making, I strive for a certain level of deliberation. Yet, I also respect the autonomy of the material as it reacts to gravity and chance.  Working in tandem with ink and solvent a conversation begins to develop, leading to new discoveries.

To produce my drawings, I establish and enact a set of predetermined gestures.  In one current series, I am pouring and pulling etching ink across a smooth paper surface with a large metal rule.  The motion is rapid and tension is created between the contrast of fluidity and precision. When pouring, I like to manipulate or distort my forms to varying degrees while articulating others.  After marking the paper, my image evolves further  as the ink pools and silts on the surface.  I seek these graphic fluctuations because they contribute to a wide range  of evocative forms.

My work often connotes science through recurring images that resemble hybrid specimens of plant life, insects or bodily viscera. Other drawings can appear archaeological and suggest fossil formations - excavated bone fragments specifically come to mind.  These varied allusions play between the extremes of the living and the dead, the animate and the reliquary. Polarity is echoed in the strong visual contrasts between black and white, transparency and opacity. Such variations endow the series with a formal flexibility and allow for multiple readings.  Form remains open-ended, suggestive, and never fully abandons the realm of abstraction.

bio

born:1961, New York, NY

education:

Montclair State University, MFA, 2009
Pratt Institute, BFA, 1983

selected awards/honors

Honorarium, Lineweight Contemporary Drawing Exhibition, Truman State University, 2009
The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Montclair State University, 2009
Type Directors Club Award, Illustration, Fox News Channel, 1997
Ford Foundation Award, Pratt Institute, 1981

selected publications

"Stimuleye", MFA Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalog, Montclair State University, p. 9-10, 2009

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Finley Gallery, "Edges", Montclair, NJ (Two-person), 2009
Finley Gallery, "Drawings", Montclair, NJ (Two-person), 2008

selected group shows