I’ve been drawing and painting since I was very young. As a result, my art is personal, even after years of professional training. When I reflect on my work, I realize that I don't paint so much for an audience (although I've done things specifically for other people) as for myself. That is, the impetus to create springs from a deeply felt need. That this happens, that other people are attracted to what I do and find meaning in it, is a wonderful thing. It fills me with an unanticipated joy.
I draw every day, with technical pens on 95 lb. rag paper; every other month or so I go through a flurry of watercoloring. I paint in acrylic and oil whenever I can, at all hours. I paint mythological variations, allegorical images, religious images, and dadaist paeans to the plight of the individual in the universe. I was taught by a group of disaffected abstract expressionists, and astract expressionism is near the heart of what I do. Even when I paint something very representational the work of Emil Nolde or Hans Hoffmann or William DeKooning is not far from my thinking.
My painting is about paint; my drawing is about lines and paper. Through these seemingly inert materials emerge figures and landscapes, mythology and theology and philosophy. I believe that a painting on someone's wall in their home should offer changing spiritual vistas. I believe that art can provide people with freedom, loosen the constraints of language, and usher new symbolic shapes into the world. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be making art.
