"Handwritten words shape, shade, and create ideas of science and spirit"

Building images with the written word is my primary focus. Paragraphs, sentences, phrases, and fragments are all the DNA of my work. And like DNA, they act as both form and content. As form, the text delineates figures and subjects layer upon layer as shading. Words varying in size from the miniscule and unreadable, to large and bold are used in a manner similar to crosshatching with pen and ink. As content, the language provides a sense of the inherent information and associations, metaphors and meanings embedded in everyday existence. The words come from a spectrum of sources ranging from my own journals, poems, songs, and automatic writings to quotes from popular culture, literature, science, and sacred texts.  I utilize them as a meditation on the image itself in both literal and figurative ways.

Foremost in each piece is an almost Renaissance attention to rendering in detail. I have a fascination with exactitude and precision. A fascination which demands a constant process of image collection, and lengthy research into subject matter. The images are gathered from multiple venues. Self generated photographs, archive photos, old anatomical drawings, even star charts and architecture become the raw material with which to compose preliminary sketches in photoshop. They are later translated onto large scale canvasses in mixed media. On a general level, the subject matter explores connections between perceived opposites. The work aims to weave disparate elements into a whole. An idea alluded to in the use of sown scraps of canvas as a foundation. On a specific level, I seek to combine concepts of the scientific and the spiritual, the mythic and the mundane. I search for symbols that meld together my interests in the natural world, psychology, religion, and astronomy to name a few. All in all, these thoughts, these materials become the building blocks for my work.