The primary focus of my work is abstract, stemming from an interest in technology, geometry, machine aesthetics, nature, and architecture.  Over the past decade, my work has been concentrated in the areas of painting and both digital and traditional printmaking. My aesthetic concerns can be traced back to several art historical figures.  Some of these references include: Da Vinci’s inventions and war machines, Piranesi’s whimsical architectural spaces, and the Futurist’s works celebrating technology, and the Pre-Dada works of Duchamp and Picabia that take a more uncertain view on technology.

My creative process is initiated through the application of current technology, building compositions on the Macintosh computer platform.  I use a range of programs to create my work. The “3-D” modeling programs I draw on have direct engineering applications and allow me to construct images in a manner that brings me to a sculptural understanding of the forms.  My works in painting and traditional printmaking considered along side my investigation of digital printmaking have taken distinct directions over time.  The work in traditional media retains an imperfect and handmade feel even though the forms referenced are computer generated and machinelike. The environment and atmosphere created within the picture plane engages ideas relating to visual networks of lines, resolution, and pixel dots present in the digital image.  The compositions have moved toward the tondo and triptych formats. The tondo has direct references to science, calling to mind the circular vignette of the microscope and telescope.  Simultaneously, the round and triptych formats are anachronistic recalling the rose windows of cathedrals and altarpieces of the Renaissance.

The ink jet elements within my works are direct representations of modeled forms and compositions I have created on the computer that deny the hand of the artist.  They represent the most perfected embodiment of the original computer files, generated through entirely mechanical means, created on the computer and printed using the highest quality technical machinery.

I merge traditional art forms and technological media in printed works.  One body of work on paper combines ink jet prints with traditional reduction woodcut to reveal process and create a dialogue between hand and machine.  The combination of woodcut and digital print contrast the earliest known printmaking form with the most current.  A second body of work joins digital print with solar plate etching.  This work utilizes positive films created with ink jet on transparent media that are manually modified to intentionally deteriorate the flawless ink jet image. The films are exposed onto photosensitive plates and printed in the traditional intaglio manner.  Combining traditional and contemporary printmaking techniques promotes a collision between intuitive hand derived images and mechanically mediated ones. On the picture plane a war is being waged between computer neutrality and the fallibility of the human hand. 

During 2008 I was an artist in residence at Can Serrat International Art Center, located in the town of El Bruc, Spain nestled at the foot of the Montserrat mountain range approximately thirty miles north of Barcelona, site of Gaudi’s significant architectural production.  The Latin origin of Montserrat literally means serrated and the mountain fits this description with its extreme perpendicular rock formations rising to a summit of 4,000 ft.  The impact of the landscape I encountered around El Bruc was unforeseen; it closely connects with Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. The composition of the church’s eastern façade resembles the Montserrat mountain range with its stalagmitic and eroded achromatic rock formations.

Antoni Gaudi’s highly sculptural architecture inspires me as an artist. The Sagrada Familia represents the essence of being an Imperfect Model, aspiring to an elevation and magnitude never reached during Gaudi’s lifetime .The Sagrada Familia is now projected to be finished in the year 2041; it appears that Gaudi’s Herculean plan for the church continues to challenge the limits of human abilities to meet its final realization.  The new generation of architects and craftsmen working on the site employ three-dimensional modeling to bring Gaudi’s concept into reality.  This has direct interest for me as an artist engaged in three-dimensional modeling in the creation of painted and printed work. The Sagrada Familia is an evolving work-site, and my visit allowed me to view the structure with both new and old components as an incomplete manifestation of Gaudi’s vision. I climbed the spiral staircase of the open tower, and viewed master plans and models at the on-site museum. The resulting series of paintings and solar plate etchings are my interpretation of the Sagrada Familia, and are distinctly hand driven and organic. The computer, always present as a tool in my creative process, is now playing a different role.  Raw materials are brought into a technological forum for development and reconstitution in contrast with earlier works that were solely built from software sources.

The processes and forms that constitute the building blocks of my creative work result in imperfect models. I create images that are intended to generate multiple connotations and layers of content.  The works generate visual tension through binary combinations of opposing forces: organic/mechanical, hard edge/painterly, male/female, three dimensional/two dimensional, and construction/destruction.  On the surface these images are intended to promote an artificial sense of security within the viewer. Upon deeper examination, considerable imperfection and vulnerability are revealed as inherent within these products of human invention.  Due to their human origin, our technological and industrial advancements are flawed and create false assurances.   I explore connections between art, science, and the human condition.  It is important for me as a visual communicator to challenge sensibility and make an impact on the viewer in a visually evocative way.  My images serve to pose questions that can not be easily dismissed, explained away, or perhaps even be answered about the reality of our existence and the value of our contributions to our planet.