My work places itself firmly in the spaces between the theocentric world of the pre-renaissance, the anthropocentric (humanist) world of the modernist and the ex-centric artwork made by the post-modern art scene.  While in a sense, touching on representation, it also parodies or creates a mimesis of contemporary culture.  

 

It is very difficult to see my hand in the work, in an almost pre-modern way (very much like the manner in which the formulaic icon of byzantine tradition erases the expressive hand of the iconographer in an effort to touch upon the transcendent or spiritual); clearly though, the works represent both my views of society, technology and the state of culture at large, placing the work firmly outside the scope of any of the above models.  It is firmly expressive, representationally derivative and yet attempts to erase any indication of my own artistic personality. 

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It is an attempt to place our culture within a framework of anthropological history – as if the works were discovered, removed from the earth from which they returned (as all must, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.”– Genesis 3:18-20) and placed on display as museum pieces intended to educate (for “Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.” – Edmund Burke). There is also a sense of nostalgia or relatedness that occurs in the work due to our connections with the forms contained therein.

 

My work is in part about the sense of loss and confusion I have when I consider culture and my place in it. The product of our time seems to be a kind of paradox, a struggle between the natural and the artificial. An appreciation for the beauty of nature, yet a denial of the One Who created it. Society worships nature and technology at the same time, a contradiction that also ironically, uses a technocratic philosophical model (in place since the enlightenment) to determine how we should think about each - thus our cultural thinking is unfairly and deterministically biased.  I am fascinated by the ways that human beings impose order on the chaos that surrounds us. I often do not understand how a piece of technology functions; yet I find myself appreciating it anyhow for the order it imposes in my life. We blindly seek solutions for our lives in the technological breakthroughs that the sciences bring to us, without ever considering the consequences of their use. 

 

My work seeks to make the viewer think about the relationship between that technology and the history of the human condition.  By placing the polar opposites of mechano-technological and organic forms in juxtaposition, I hope to stimulate conversation about the fragility of human existence, our reliance upon forces outside of ourselves, and the type of archeological evidence we are leaving behind as a culture. They reference the industrial, the technological, the electrical, the mechanical, the organic, the human and the archeological. What will they find when they dig up our leavings? If change does not come – and soon – I fear we will leave behind a dark cultural legacy, a memento mori (remembrance of death) that leaves behind no hope for the future. 

 

The forms and symbols found in my most recent body of work are intentionally vague, taken from the things that surround us every day.  Referential, but not necessarily recognizable, intended to convey meaning through an emotional response connected to a deeper and often unconscious perception of our personal environments.

 

Color in my work is intended to convey the sense of age that one sees and feels when viewing the bones of dinosaurs and archeological digs, bits and pieces of the flotsam of history. There is beauty here too. It is interesting to consider how natural forces affect the shapes and colors of things long gone.  The work is displayed in this manner and in this formal setting not simply because it is a gallery exhibition; the intention is for it to be viewed as such things might be displayed in a museum.  Pieces of history perched on the wall for us to ogle at (consider the slabs of stone and stele that are displayed in art museums around the world). They are painted with much the same intention that museum curators have had when attempting to give to us an accurate representation of the archaic Greek sculptures of kouros and koré.

 

It is purposefully mixed media, including things that we see everyday pressed into, through and attached to the clay substrate.  These are referencing forms often found by archeologists, like the extinct arthropods found between layers of rock; often all that is left behind is the impression of the physical substance of the object.