I have an interest in the environment as it relates to humanity and mythology. My narrative paintings use personifications of the seasons and the weather, (e.g., Persephone, Jack Frost, etc.), as indicators of our cultural ties to nature. Because our contemporary environment is under the siege of climate change, these mythical gods and spirits experience extreme weather conditions along with us. In addition, I endeavor to show nature as a strange and wondrous world that encapsulates light, time, mystery, and flux.
I have always been interested in the world as it relates to the human condition. Since 1995 when I won an NEA based on my paintings of food, I have changed the themes of my paintings approximately every six to eight years, pursuing whatever path my practice took. Regardless, my work has always been interested in cultural narratives and humanity.
Never purely abstract, nor completely realistic, my paintings always fell somewhere in-between. From 1992 – 98, my work focused on food. Studying our food sources steered me towards food gathering, which developed into paintings concerned with the collecting of natural specimens from 1998 – 2004.
In 2004, I was compelled to paint a massive pile of plastic toys on my studio table. There ensued another seven-year body of work struggling with mass consumption and the psychology depicted in “Happy Meal” toys. It ended about 2011, when the work had progressed to painting the portraits of rubber puppet heads. In an attempt to project “life” into the puppets who posed for me, I painted them as if they were alive.
When I first saw a “capgrosso”, (a Catalan big head) in 2012, I was smitten. These papier-mache’ big head masks were like the puppet heads, but sized “extra-large.” My intention at first was simply to paint them. However, it wasn’t long before I started building them with the help of Catalan folk artists, Ventura and Hosta. This was my first venture into 3-D, though I continued to paint. My paintings correlated with my big heads through scenes of Carnival. I won a Fulbright in 2018 to study the carnival culture of Belgium and James Ensor. Through this work I learned the importance of the seasons as they relate to the timing of Carnival and other mummer traditions like Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. This respect for the seasons and their weather patterns is what has brought me to my current work.