Half the Travel Collage

I have been an artist since I was very young. I have faced difficulties related to mental health, specifically bipolar disorder and anxiety -- my experiences regarding these health issues have informed my work a great deal. Art has functioned in different ways for me during different periods of my life. I used to draw obsessively in order to cope with anxiety; in class at college, for example, I could withstand the anxiety and nervous tension if I could channel the information presented, along with my own inner dialogue, into notes that took on a diagrammatic, oddly detailed character. Much of my work is rooted in the idea of confusion. I draw from a variety of sources: mathematics, engineering, history, symbology, game theory, architecture, science, and many others. I employ diagrams to give my pictures (and occasional sculptural works)the illusion of communication: while I suggest certain themes with the imagery included in a given piece as well as the titles. I try to allow the viewer room for his/her interpretation of the "meaning" of the piece. I ascribe no meaning to either the making of the work, nor the resulting subject. I think of the work only as personal artifacts/records of a series of deliberate actions. Ever since I was very young, I have been exposed to crowded, repetitive cycles of hypnagogic visions; I believe this phenomenon informed my sensibility of how I want my pictures to look, as well as affording me a diminished attitude towards the work "making sense." Extremely vital to my satisfaction with what I am doing is an actual and visible sense of time spent completing a piece. (to be completed soon...)