Artist Statement

My recent work explores the mystery and ambiguities (philosophical, political, and psychological) that touch the heart of the human condition. Seeing with both inner and outer eye, not separately but interrelated, my images straddle the boundary between figuration and abstraction. Whether the image is that of a human face or a wooded landscape, the essence resides in a place you cannot see, a place of unknowability. The subject of my work is existential. It is an exploration of the borderline state between being and non-being. The most important aspect of my images is that they must be felt first and then perhaps contemplated intellectually. Because our perception never coincides with the true appearance, character, context, or environment of our observations, I use limited detail, layers of inanimate/animate objects, hidden forms, erasure, and distortion to produce a shift in meaning and to avoid totalization of the subject. In response to the ideas of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, I make art that engages in a mode of seeing that invites vision to attentiveness, openness, and mystery that no longer allows the eye to dominate the object before it.