I learned to draw at a young age. My father would always ask me, "How would you paint that?" Long before I ever picked up a paint brush and this got me thinking of everything as a painting. When I finally did go to art school I was granted the opportunity to work and study in Manhattan with Empire State College. This allowed me to be introduced to and critiqued by many successful contemporary artists, including Eric Fischl and Janine Antoni. This exposure increased my skill level and drive to pursue oil painting as a career.
Upon completion of my Fine Arts degree, I moved to New York City officially beginning my career as a painter. While exhibiting my work in the city I secured a position as a studio painter for Mark Kostabi, a leading figure in the East Village art movement of the 80’s. While working with Kostabi, I felt the need to diversify my experiences and became an intern for Douglas Davis, a multimedia and performance artist. As an intern I collaborated on ideas, framed and constructed art pieces.
In the fall of 2001, I decided to move back upstate to concentrate on the developement of my own body of work. My paintings were heavily influenced by surrealism, exploring the subconscious through the use of metaphoric images. They were not preconceived; they created themselves as I randomly added images that struck me the time. I drew from a growing collection of images taken from magazines and my own photography.
After using sand as texture in some of my canvas paintings, I stumbled upon the concept of oil on sandpaper. Looking at the sandpaper, the rusty brown color reminded me of Old Master Works like Rembrandt. I have always been influenced by the Baroque artists and their dramatic lighting. I mostly use deep shadowed figures allowing me to complete the image with the sandpaper in the absence of paint. The figures seem to emerge from the paper through the static “white noise†look of the grain. The course texture adds a strain and tension to the act of painting as well as dimension to the image. In the new “large scale†series the figures seem to struggle and pull their way to the surface of the paper away from the gritty haze of the unknown into the light.
While I may interpret specific things in my paintings the images that find themselves onto the paintings may represent something different to each viewer. One of the greatest pleasures and drives I have as a painter is the pleasure of experiencing each painting multiple times through the interpretations of each observer.
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