artist_statement.

A portrait can reveal the happiest moments, the most unspeakable horrors, the strangest quirks, and the darkest secrets locked within the intricate intimacies of the human psyche.  The images I draw and paint on paper and canvas represent a deep and dramatic look into the very essence of humanity in all its colors, forms, imperfections and fragility.  And yet it is not just about scratching the surface of the face or figure, or choosing to render the self or a specific individual among the masses, it is about the hidden energy underneath the skin, the act of digging into the physicality of the person.  From the dark and warmly muted portraits of Rembrandt, to the sickly thick flesh tones rendered in the paintings of Lucien Freud, we cannot help but let the visceral response take over, to establish an exaggerated empathy for what we are physiologically, and who we are psychologically.

Swirls of color, shade and form are created and connected to everything on the surface, features blend together to become a face, the face becomes a body, the body and background collide, the viewer is pulled into a world of spectacle that is created from pieces of other worlds, objects, people, and places.  Passing through countless eras of time and technologies, from ancient to classic, modern to post-modern, the human condition remains the same.  Like a permanent shadow, we cannot abandon our most primal fears and desires, written across our faces in the universal language of muscle and skin, sinew and bone.  Our collective mortality is revealed in the pains and pleasures of life and the slow but certain inevitability of death.

This most recent series of self-portraits leaves me staring at camera and mirror revealing intimate moments with photographs, pixels, light and reflection.  But all of these elements disintegrate onto the canvas as the face breaks down in brush, knife, and paint, revealing an intricate hidden history, a geologically embossed map of anatomy and flesh.  And as we look closer, the face dissolves completely.  It is in this that I seek the truth, to understand this visage that hardly seems human, to discover what is really there, and who we are beneath the surface, where our true identity lies.  And this is where I live.   I study it; every pore, tear, break, bump, blister, wrinkle, crack, scar, welt, blemish, tone and texture.  We see and feel the agony and the ecstasy of existence, because we have no other choice.  The paint is just a means to bring us there.