STATEMENT OF WORK

For over 30 years, I have made work in which I depict versions of myself or members of my artistic community as a series of fragmented identities. In the 1990’s I solicited professional observers— including police sketch artists, illustrators and journalists — to construct my portrait in their industry-standard style, exploring the role of representation in the creation of identity. More recently I have focused my attention on what it is to be an artist navigating through both historical and contemporary influences in order to hone my singular voice.

One of the conditions that feels unique to this moment is our collective awareness of the work of so many more artists than in the past, before social media brought the world to us. In 2014 I began compiling photos of certain artists into a curated database which has become the source of all the artwork I’ve made since. Their images become scaffolding for my own formal explorations. Those I admire become part of my digital archive as do the drawings, paintings, collages or sculptures that spring from these photos. I distill their images to lines or flat forms, and as I take them on journeys through mediums, further fragmenting and reusing prior iterations, I’m able to savor the fruits of my years of studio work, trusting myself enough to improvise. Always portraiture adjacent, my work has gone from an examination of the self as configured through the gaze of others, to searching for my own artistic expression through engaging with images of my fellow travelers.