ARTIST STATEMENT

Living and working in New York City since 1994, I have been inspired by the city and it’s many industries, cultures, and the energy itself. My background as a graphic designer and illustrator for the beauty industry influences my work and is evident in my choices of imagery and application. 

I make large-scale mixed media paintings rendered on Belgian linen, often featuring iconic forms, distilled to their abstract minimal shapes, lines and contours, or photographic simplicity. By combining  elaborate patterns, inspired uses of metal leaf, cutting, collage and oil paints, I create original compositions and artworks.. 

Utilizing a self-discovered process, I work with found or appropriated imagery. I photoshop, cut, collage, layer, or draw on these creating a new composition, which is then transferred onto canvas. This process leaves behind black ink and reveals a natural degradation. Provident imperfections occur and new shapes and textures present themselves. This creates a wholly new interpretation of the original. Often I add oil paint, oil stick, reflective silver, lacquer, or gold leaf, connecting the tapestry-like patterning to the figure itself. Or, the form is reduced and redrawn by cutting, collaging, and patterning, creating new “original” images. 

The result is a highly textural surface, ripe with visual tension and questions of interpretation. Deliberate juxtapositions and purposefully degraded, repurposed imagery prompt questions about beauty, perfection, and issues surrounding contemporary icon “worship”, devotional imagery and the pressures put on 21st century women.

My work is inspired by such contemporary artistic influences as Marilyn Minter, Mickalene Thomas, Christopher Wool, Elizabeth Peyton but also stretches back to Warhol, Matisse, Botticelli and the gold ground paintings of the early Renaissance.  The work references graphic design, Arabic tiles and mosaics, fashion photography and the barrage of disposable imagery in today’s media.  All of these call to mind cultivated interpretations of perfection, beauty, the female form, sex symbols, icons and idols.

I am interested in both the meaning behind the images I use to create the work, but also I’m really inspired by the process itself. There is an element of printmaking, layering images and then taking them away, collaging and relating lines, colors, textures and materials. Sometimes the processes and systems I use are just as important as the images I chose, and they propell each other to a new, unique work of art.