My work is a study in the phenomenological and ontological aspects of seeing and the construction of meaning apropos the viewers relationship with their immediate surroundings relative to all experience leading up to the very moment they encounter the image. An image is more than what we see hanging on the wall in front of us. To see is beyond what we are granted by our sense of sight -- sight is an objective physical response. What we see is never without bias, is never neutral, but is always somehow entangled with our understanding of things internally and externally. An image is a mirror. What we look for in any work of art is a part of ourselves reflected back at us. For me Art is never a simply a thing that can be objectified or reduced to a simple-to-understand kernel of a particular meaning, statement or sentiment. It is a middle ground, a silent conversation that occurs between the work and the viewer based on what they see or experience. I make my work under these assumptions and as an avenue through which I can explore the mark freed from the restrictions of either the direct or implied representation of a thing. I am an obsessive mark maker working diligently to move beyond making a picture of something and instead strive to create a void to be filled by whatever the viewer might bring.

Drawing is something that is extremely dear to me and for which my motivation and desire to continue doing ultimately comes down to a love of simply making a drawing. I love the feeling of applying pressure to the pen as I move it across the surface -- usually a sheet of paper or a digital drawing tablet, varying the weight and meter of my line as I go. When drawing on paper, I love the sense of the material giving way beneath the pressure of the nib. Being that most of my work ends up in the computer, I'm extremely interested in exploring the idea of a seemingly ephemeral, digital mark. In my on-going pursuit of making simple marks in any of my chosen media, I continuously strive to make each mark better than the last -- better in accordance to a personal and evolving criterion as to what better is. There is also the fairly obvious idea that the mark I make on a sheet of paper or in the computer, metaphorically speaking, is a manifestation of the mark that I wish to make on the world. There have been many drawings that I've seen that have helped me construct a larger sense of meaning in the world around me and to affect a viewer in that way with my own work is one of my greatest aspirations. Drawing is the means through which I seek to understand the world and that which transcends my understanding of it. It is a materialistically grounded practice for the purpose of exploring the metaphysical and ephemeral.

I initially gave my latest work the working title of Meconnaissance based on Jacques Lacan's term of the same name. The term refers to a kind of misinterpretation based on a lack of correspondence between what we see and what the thing we are seeing actually is in reality. This idea seems to mesh very well with what I intend in this work -- that the drawings resemble something but there is nothing but line and form that are easily interpreted as something. It is, again, a synthesis of the work and what the viewer brings -- a viewer will see the work as it is presented and almost instantaneously (probably without even realizing) generate an idea of what it is. However, the idea isn't about me presenting an organic looking drawing or print and having the viewer just make up what the thing is for themselves. The work is actually about the moment and the general proclivity for making a thing (a drawing or print in this case) into something in the first place. My question, then, is what is this impulse that drives a viewer unconsciously to seek out an anchor in the form of a recognizable artifact in an image that allows for the further interpretation of the thing based on that recognition or comparison? I leave the answer to my audience.