Concentration
is indispensible. Painter Rackstraw Downes has said, "I spend hours ... looking at real things with as much concentration
as I can muster and everything comes from that concentration." Imagination is indispensible. Everything in my work is born
from the marriage and tension between concentration and imagination.
An ongoing project is my
exploration of the history and present day reality of The American Museum of Natural History ("AMNH"). Research begins in
the storage and public areas of the museum with identification of specimens of interest and research into the legacy of each
specimen's discoverer or donor. I bring these discoveries of discoveries back to the studio, where selected sketches become
the basis for detailed, focused, graphite on hot pressed watercolor paper drawings. My preliminary sketches contain intentional
and significant information gaps. As a result, all described surface detail in each finished drawing is wholly imagined,
an infinite abstract topography bound by the forms of the fossil artifact depicted.
In March 2007 I was Artist-in-Residence
at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. While there, I made a series of sketches and photographs, concentrating
on the monzogranite rock piles found in the Mojave Desert section of the park. Since returning to New York, I have manipulated
and recycled this reference material in a similar way to the way I use sketches from the AMNH, in this case to create a series
of oil on panel paintings.
