I make drawings and paintings that range in scale from letter-sized to wall-sized.  I am engaged with the physical qualities of the materials I use and intend to entice the viewer with visually compelling work.  Ultimately, I am engaged in the primal act of mark-making. The surface texture and illusion of form comes from my hand. The process is technologically archaic and full of content, underscoring the narrative of the imagery.  Both process and imagery come together to describe the tension between two psychological places, one of control and one of instinct.

The animal hybrids recast creatures from myths and folklore into contemporary archetypes for the modern family. Emerson’s advice to “first be good animals” suggests a respect for what civilized life so often ignores.  I am, after all, an animal.  In many ways, the hybrids contend with a denied eroticism.  They may be immediately perceived as a quasi-sexualized freak show, but intend to reveal a more complex metaphor.  For example, the absurdity of the reclining nude cum sow pokes fun at the notion of ‘supermom.’ The woman is erotic, deformed, a goddess and a pig.  The deer road kill series continues describing this empathetic relationship with nature.  The deer are anthropomorphic, but with less manipulation than the hybrids. I began drawing the deer road kill as a way of confronting the capricious nature of violence.  In I Saw This: Trophies, I was thinking of Goya’s Disasters of War.  Both the jack o’lantern and the deer allude to heads displayed as trophies. More recently, I have been interested in the experiences of children.  I am fascinated by their methods of survival in a world filled with monsters and heroes.  Within this context of childhood, I am currently exploring organic patterns of growth that manifest in ways that protect and ways that kill.