Early in my education my studio emphasis was painting, but my work quickly took a multi-dimensional tack to include sculpture, photography and installation. For me, the presence of physical space does not allow it to simply fade into the background to act as a receptacle for the objects in it. Therefore, part of my work includes installations that acknowledge that space.
In 1993 I began an exploration that continues to hold my interest to present day, and is a significant focus of much of my work. It started with a collaborative installation entitled 'Too Thick to Chew, the Aphasic Works' at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla, California with San Diego-based artist Richard Keely. This work, represented in many subsequent sculptures, paintings and installations since then, explores the concepts of language, communication, and the collection and storage of information (be it physical, visual or written), and its exponential growth as history moves forward.
While the content of my work most often addresses these substantive issues, characteristics of it are colored by additional influences. Because I travel for half the year as a guide for the National Parks in the West and Southwest of the United States, the mundane act of packing as much as possible into small spaces - luggage - manifests through concepts of density - filling containers; tubes, jars and boxes. In addition, the thick application of paint and other materials that push up against the borders of a canvas to fill every possible space speak to this ‘density’. The aesthetic for rich materials and process stem from my background in painting combined with a steady diet of stunning visual landscapes set within various stages of layered erosional drama.
In 1993 I began an exploration that continues to hold my interest to present day, and is a significant focus of much of my work. It started with a collaborative installation entitled 'Too Thick to Chew, the Aphasic Works' at the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla, California with San Diego-based artist Richard Keely. This work, represented in many subsequent sculptures, paintings and installations since then, explores the concepts of language, communication, and the collection and storage of information (be it physical, visual or written), and its exponential growth as history moves forward.
While the content of my work most often addresses these substantive issues, characteristics of it are colored by additional influences. Because I travel for half the year as a guide for the National Parks in the West and Southwest of the United States, the mundane act of packing as much as possible into small spaces - luggage - manifests through concepts of density - filling containers; tubes, jars and boxes. In addition, the thick application of paint and other materials that push up against the borders of a canvas to fill every possible space speak to this ‘density’. The aesthetic for rich materials and process stem from my background in painting combined with a steady diet of stunning visual landscapes set within various stages of layered erosional drama.