About the Artist

I am an artist living in the Baltimore area for about 20 years now. 

I earned an MFA at The University of Arizona in 2003 and a BFA at The University of North Carolina Asheville in 1999. I've had exhibits both regionally and nationally, and was recently published in New American Paintings, South, Issue 142. Additional achievements include being a semifinalist for the 2016 Sondheim Prize and receiving Individual Artist Grants in Painting by the Maryland State Arts Council in 2016 and 2019.  

 

About the Art 

I have several different bodies of work so it's tough to make a singular statement about the whole group. That said, it is easy enough to talk about each of the different bodies of work and offer some deeper insights on my ideas. 

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Arrangements with Mannequins

This body of work started in the Covid Lockdown of 2020. Trapped at home for days on end, my sweet escape was to go to Towson University, my workplace. I’d go to the drawing room and draw and paint from the still life closet. The college was like a ghost town, and the art building was virtually deserted. I held an open studio, though I rarely saw more than one or two students.  The series likely started with me doing class demos but morphed into something much more expansive. I began to pull out and assemble my favorite mannequins, and spend time thinking about these mysterious, human-like objects we use to approximate the human form. They became my strange new company. The older models wear the many scars of being hastily moved from one room to another- cracks, bruises, and discoloration decorate their limbless bodies. Both matched and miss-matched arms and legs awkwardly attach to these plastic, helpless torsos. Unseeing eyes, some remarkably penetrating, seem to hold secrets no one will ever know. Mouths that will never speak, noses that will never smell- these pitiable plastic forms allowed my imagination to take flight. Once the menagerie of props- deer antlers, bricks and bottles, human skulls, fake fruit and plants, and colorful drapery are introduced, the mysterious narrative only deepens.  

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Nagasaki Sketchbook Paintings 2020

This group of paintings started in Nagasaki, Japan. When my wife and I go to visit her family, I often draw in my sketchbook. Over time I have amassed several sketchbooks full of ideas. The imagery is from parks, hospitals, temples, cathedrals, parking lots, the wharf, graveyards, shrines, museums, and other places I have visited while in this fascinating city.
I simply sit and draw what I see, for a limited time, then move to what comes next. I try and keep the sketches moving at the same speed as my perception and experience of the area. This process helps me to experience what this city and the people here are all about. The drawings are not completely observational, as some of my other work is- but are observations combined with interpretation and imagination. While I certainly lean toward specific symbolic or iconographical material as anchors in these paintings, I take joy in incorporating aspects of the everyday as well. From the sketchbooks, I form the paintings you see here. I have re- drawn them much larger, on canvas, and painted them. I work fairly quickly and instinctively with the paint. The goal is to keep the immediacy and spontaneity of the sketches, while opening and deepening their meaning through color, texture, and value.

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The Creative Class

This is an ongoing series of watercolor portraits describing the life and spaces of the "creative class." It is important that I understand and explore my sitters' personal symbolism, and include it, as much as possible, in the narrative. The process of seeing and developing each person's symbolic personae, and how they engage with each other and me, has been very interesting!
As an artist, it's no surprise that most of my friends are also artists, of one form or another. In some cases, I have worked to incorporate some of what they do/ make into their painting. In others I focus more on trying to find symbols that most accurately capture their beliefs and aesthetic ideas.

 

On the Stoop

The On the Stoop Series, made with ink wash and pen, started as a tongue in cheek exploration of stoop culture in Baltimore. City folks of all stripes enjoy sitting out on their front steps and watching the world go by. As the series developed, I started seeing interesting political and social overtones evolve in the work. Some of this is about my relationship to the city, and some delves into our specific social issues, both in the local and the international arena. I hope that a darkly comical feeling is evoked, with references to the satirical work of the English artist, William Hogarth among many others in the satirical, illustrative tradition.

 

Baltimore Ruins

The Baltimore Ruins paintings are highly detailed paintings of the city's crumbling and in some cases, razed, structures. I aspire to reflect the deep, dark, gritty nature of the city, as is reflected in its architecture. Inferences to the human psyche are enmeshed in each gash, hole, and sloppy patch.

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Nagasaki, Japan

This group of paintings is rooted in the architecture and people of Nagasaki, Japan. I realize that Nagasaki is most well known to the US as one of the two cities on which atomic bombs were dropped. I am purposefully choosing to show other aspects of the city. Having a wife from Nagasaki, and spending significant time there myself, I know that the city is much more than this horrible episode. I hope to describe the unique texture of the city. Despite the bombing, it is well known in Japan as a historically rich city. Some of these paintings are about me understanding the city and my little place in it. They are densely layered paintings, and in person, very luminous.
Though Japan certainly has the historic architecture it is so well known for, it also has some blocky, concrete architecture of the 60s and 70s as well as plenty of Art Deco. This more common architecture is what sets the stage for the Magical Realism I paint. 

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Fantasy, Surreal, and Subterfuge 

This group of paintings is a collection of work that floats between conscious and unconscious thoughts and urges. They are meant to investigate ideas of personal transformation, identity, subversive behavior, and the individual’s place in society.
While this work may nod toward illustration and fantasy, it is also very much influenced by Renaissance and Mannerist painting. Some of the images combine elements of Western religious iconography with symbols and figures from Japan. This combination of cultures and symbols is, in many ways, a description of my current life. In broader language, the mixture of icons is a reaction to the direction of our more globalized world.

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