Walk outside on a city street, or in a mall corridor, or even in school hallways, and you see people connected to technology like Borgs from Star Trek, totally reliant on their connections to instant information. I’m just as guilty as the next person, constantly checking my emails, Facebook, and several online newspapers, all while listening to the radio, or watching TV. Subsequently, I’ve become interested in how our ability to receive and assimilate a myriad of information on a daily basis can be reflected in a 2-dimensional format. I try to reflect that capability through complex compositions that meld these ideas together. Using contrasts of color, shape, placement, quantity, size, as well as other types of visual contrasts, and through intuitive investigation, I try to sort through and bring some type of order to this chaos of daily information overload. The paintings have become a record of an autobiographical visual language that consists of codes and symbols combined to suggest personal narratives that are juxtaposed next to or on top of previous statements. This creates a layered history in the paintings much in the same way as we store memories. Some shapes are strong and vivid, while others become broken and incoherent, only suggested by the pentimenti left as a visual reminder of their previous existence.
Coupled with my interest in having composition reflect contemporary media overload, I am interested in colors ability to relay information as well. For instance, comic books have used color to portray notions of good and evil, as has religion and mythology. Comic Book characters in their oversized bodies, personalities, and colorful costumes have become a kind of contemporary American mythology. I enjoy using palettes derived from Superheroes and Supervillains as a way to add a subtle narrative and hierarchy to the compositions. I often use 1980’s Superman comic book covers as the source of my palettes, because it is the time of my teenage years and Military Service. Good and Evil were still being described to us in Black and White. The Cold War was still in progress, and we had a clearly defined enemy. Comics were drawn and written in those terms as well, and the colors were saturated and vibrant. As I have developed these ideas further, I have delved into the comics of the 1990’s and 2000’s for sources of color. At that time in comics, Good and Evil becomes more nebulous, often existing in a gray area in between, and the colors become more deep and neutral. I am also influenced by the overall composition of the comic book page. I am intrigued by how comic artists use the size and shape of each panel to depict time and space, to speed through time, or linger on a moment. I think such a device could be interesting to use in non-objective painting, and I continue to investigate its possibilities.
My paintings have a tendency to be busy, loud, and complex, just like the world we live in.