Precipice Painting

Over the years, travels throughout Europe and Ireland have had a profound visual effect on my work. Based on statuary and ruins encountered in the landscape , I began a series of paintings initially inspired by feelings and imagery experienced there. These influences were coupled with a love of medieval and gothic forms, historical subject matter, and a love of history. I also began to incorporate alternative, often organic materials like wax, tar, wood, and fabric to achieve a more elemental and tactile connection with the work. The exploration of ideas about monuments, memory, history, and the passage of time has become a primary theme. My paintings often include combinations of anatomical imagery, memorial sculpture, romantic symbolism, and historical iconography. The works are created using deep supports that stand out from the wall and assert themselves in the viewer's space. In many cases, the physical qualities of the work are meant to suggest the physical weightiness associated with monuments. Collaged materials, including heavy fabrics and printed matter, contribute to the surface of the work. After this weathered, heavily worked surface is established, it is sealed in a layer of beeswax, and the figurative elements are rendered in tar and varnish. The organic qualities of the wood, wax, and tar communicate a feeling of timelessness. I believe that the processes of building, weathering, eroding and layering are important to the work's identity -- it creates a history that can be traced, investigated, and experienced by the viewer. Often, these materials are meant to recall and engage the physical body, and with the accompanying image, evoke a meditational response from the viewer. Through a mixed use of painterly languages, these works explore the nature of memory and address our desire to locate spiritual meaning.