Metaphorically and in practice, I explore the interrelatedness of darkness and light within individual lives and the natural world. My work seeks to illuminate the predicament of living an increasingly threatened existence on a still immensely beautiful planet. For some, the threat remains unrecognizable. For others, it is the beauty that is imperceptible.
I am presently creating a series of paintings entitled Shadows in the Cave. Engaging the American dream as a robust ideal and an illusion, the series explores concepts of hope, freedom, and loss as they take various shapes in individual lives and the culture at large. The work examines the relationship between personal and social narratives, and grapples with a contemporary dilemma: despite widespread technological means of constant connectedness, we are known and seen less, increasingly isolated in a sea of electronic gazes that have replaced needed experiences of recognition and intimacy.
My work as offers a direct passage from the experienced (and aspired) to the expressed as a transformative realism, or the setting of everydayness and common recognizability in tension with a vivid and transfigured presence.