Groundwork Large Encased Drawing

I'm originally from Central New York, and currently reside there on a farm and studio. In 2010 I concluded eight years of academic and professional work in Albany, New York, with a BFA in Painting from The College of Saint Rose, a dual degree in Art Education, and an MFA in Fine Arts from The University at Albany. I spent several years instructing undergraduate drawing courses at The University at Albany before returning to Syracuse accepting a Fine Arts faculty position at Fayetteville-Manlius High School. I take pleasure in teaching others how to see while maintaining my studio and exhibition routine as a professional artist. I take part practicing and showing with a local figure drawing group, as figurative drawing is a constant in my process and often influences my abstracted work; noticing a shift from more mechanical imagery to more organic forms since continuing my figurative practice here in Syracuse. Submerging painting into drawing, I transform a matrix of media layers into a skin that reveals specific imagery or indefinable figures. The result becomes a strange world: part nostalgic post-Pop graphics and color, and part romantic impulsive drawing; mixing mechanical, visual, and scientific interests from my life. Characters are created within the surfaces that perform a particular dialogue or exchange. Subjects are derived from the many mechanical parts in my surroundings and personal interests in technology and the natural landscape, melding organic atmospheres with manmade structures, as well as a fascination with my family's deep history in the sciences. Current artworks are made by melding layers of acrylic polymers, pumice ground, airbrush pigments, graphite and charcoal; balancing drawing techniques within painting. I see this work as an expression of my environment. We are products of individual contexts that frame daily life: I embrace my technological and scientific histories as well as observations of the natural interactions between parts, people, and things.