Artist Statement

Years ago, as I was asking a group of art students in a Personal StyIe Development class to try to find the thread in their life's body of work, I decided to consider the same question. Over the years I had explored many medias, supports and concepts. Working as a commissioned artist had taken me on many different paths. After contemplating thirty-something years of artistic projects, many looking initially as if they could have been created by different artists, I discovered that the consistent drift in my work was the idea of accentuating the three dimensional quality in the piece, whether it was contrast in textures or multiple levels of spatial depth. Sometimes it was visual and sometimes it was tactile constructions. Playing with the ambiguity of form, space and texture fueled my artistic drive.

It started showing itself when I was three years old, designing the ultimate mud pie: multiple levels decorated with radiant blades of grass, emanating from "spiral jetties" of raised pebbles, then working with contrasting textured large fabric assemblages, then onto Lucas Samaras-like chairs: chairs painted with fantasy stone textures and layered with real found objects. Ten years ago, this interest culminated in paintings on two dimensional surfaces that give the illusion that something invitingly tangible is there. Basically, trompe l'oeil painting of structures, textures and objects. The paintings often have fantasy elements involved and some kind of mystery waiting to be revealed by the viewer's imagination. The compositions are combinations of symbolic images (metaphoric portraits or prosaic musing on universal philosophic themes) and design principles. The thematic objects are specifically selected depending on their color ,size, shape and relationship to each other. The settings are selected to invoke the mood of a shrine or monument - a place of honor. Everything is painted with a high degree of realism, often life size elements. Sometimes, the foreground is trompe l'oeil in character, the middle and background being more atmospheric along with illusionistic.

To be able to manifest the illusion of three-dimensional form for the wonder and amusement of the audience, like a magician or circus carnie, brings the paintings to life for me. A surreal attitude in the style of traditional trompe l'oeil, my intention is to have my still-life paintings follow in the words of Erica Jong, "there is no such thing as a still-life".