Artist Statement
My work explores the intersection of time and location with process and memory. I start with observational drawings done on site and work in series, often developing several related images simultaneously. Sometimes the paintings incorporate the whole of the original sketch; at other times I adapt the drawing-- copying, cutting and reassembling the image by hand. These pieces fuse traditional techniques with new media: layering silverpoint with Xerox, collage with tempera, oil paint with encaustic.
Although the resulting works evoke industrial architecture, I intend for the images to be as abstract as memory. I would like viewers to feel as if they have stumbled upon the records of half-forgotten times and places. I work and rework the primary image, filtering it through various media, but always looping back to reference the original drawing. The distortion of the original image as it evolves from drawing to painting parallels the course of memory degrading and shifting over time.
In the paintings, the depicted structures are decaying factories that have lost most of their relevance to the vitality of the modern city, but still continue to haunt the post-industrial American landscape. Pentimenti, barely visible traces of the history of the process, remain etched into the surface of the work. Both the pentimenti and the abandoned structures are visual metaphors for the act of painting itself, often considered obsolete in the landscape of contemporary art, but tenacious, compelling, and always influential.