Umbrella 1.0 - Limited Edition of 50 Artwork

Born 1965, Bellerose, NY Albuquerque NM 1978-1990 Chicago, IL 1990-present. I was introduced to photography in an entry level photo class at the University of New Mexico sometime in the mid 1980's. For me, photography was this amazing hybrid process. Part art, part chemistry, it fed my appetite for the mechanical and technical that had dominated my life up to that point, while introducing me to an entirely new world of art, art history, and criticism, and design. As I matured as an image maker, my work always resided in an area somewhere between photography and painting. I used photographs to render paintings that were luminous and scarce; isolated figures engulfed in space and light; personal allegories. These were back in the 1980’s when computers and digital images were still years away from becoming a viable reality for image making. I worked with slides, projectors, and whatever else I could get my hands on to create images and paintings. This hybridization of process would become a cornerstone of, not only my image making processes, but my career as a creative director for a custom manufacturer that specialized in alternative materials and material combinations. In 1993 I become the creative director, and founder of Soupcan , Inc., a high end manufacturer of cast furniture. This opportunity allowed me to use my creative abilities in a new and exciting way, namely, the introduction of the computer and digital applications on a large scale for creative purposes. It prepared me for my future image making endeavors by introducing me to the computer, CAD, and automated machinery for manufacturing which I have come to embrace. My current work (since 2012) still uses photography as a base, or starting point, substituting alternative printing methods such as gelatin transfers, and digital mixed media in lieu of straight painting alone. My images have always incorporated layering and blurring of visual components to flatten and meld the overall spatial quality; when paired with abrasion and physical scarring of the image surfaces, the works strike a balance of sorts between realism and abstraction and my reoccurring ambition to evoke a sense of memory, undefined, rather than a specific recorded moment or event. Ideally, the effect is a more contemplative one rather than striking an ultimatum or providing a static solution. Most recently, I have been working with AI assisted algorithms to generate new images.