Artist Statement

I make figurative paintings in oil, combining palette knife and brush. In my work, I am investigating what it means to be human, in the most visceral sense.

The vast majority of my pieces contain three elements: The Earth, an individual human being, and a single light source. The bodies are painted unclothed, freeing the work from the cultural and temporal implications of clothing.

I use the movements, tensions, and positioning of the body to convey the inner life of the person being depicted. This use of dynamic tension was something that I learned from the sculptor Rodin. When I was a teenager, I discovered a sculpture garden in downtown Dallas with multiple Rodin bronzes. Other than a security guard who would occasionally pass by, I could sit alone in this garden late at night. It became a sanctuary, and a place of meditation. I would bring my journal, and write down my thoughts in the midst of the works of Rodin, Maillol and others. It was these sculptures that ignited my desire to be an artist.

My early figurative works were primarily made with graphite on paper, and I frequently de-emphasized the facial features, or allowed them to fade to invisibility, so that all of the emotional content would have to be discovered in the body itself. Hands replaced eyes as the primary means of expressing emotions.

Since 2018, the representation of the human body has been blended with the textures and colors of nature, specifically those of rocks. I worked in landscaping for many years, and later for a masonry company, where I was often captivated by the colors of stone. I would occasionally buy a particular rock at the supply yards to keep for myself, because it had some unique streak of yellow, or green, or a vibrant red next to a gash of carbonized black. Incorporating this love of the colors of nature into my work has become a way of conveying the unity of the human being with the material of the Earth, from which we are formed. When painting the original pieces in this series, I would paint from two models: a human being, and a rock from my collection, which had a unique combination of colors. I would initially draw the body in black and white from the model. When the painting phase began, I mixed a palette to reflect the colors of the rock, and used that palette to paint the body.

In my work, I am addressing the extraordinary fact that the same elements that form the rocks and the soil and the oceans and the clouds, have been brought together by nature to form our bodies. Life acts as the conductor, keeping carbon and minerals and oxygen and water flowing in a symphony of unimaginable complexity. And for a brief moment in time, consciousness appears, and the dust of the Earth is able to open its eyes as a human being.