Artist Statement

Many years ago, I became fascinated with the notion of the poet as an antenna, essentially channeling words onto paper and rejecting the notion that a poem is an artifact of the ego's imposition of control over words. I began experimenting heavily with language, words, phonetics, layout, compositions, etc. A few years later, I began experimenting more with my dreams as content for poems. Eventually I found myself repeatedly using words to paint pictures, stripping my poems of a narrative. I even wound up spending more time worrying about the layout, and the way a reader would encounter the words. I was cutting words out of magazines, pasting them onto pages, and re-arranging them. I feel this was a turning point when I began experimenting with art. I work primarily in acrylic. Mostly on canvas, but also on wood panels. I use a fair bit of mediums and collage. I like walking the line between abstract work and representational. What interests me most about painting is creating something visually energetic while being explicitly un-automatable. When I'm painting, I run as far away from technology as I can get. I love the physical act of painting -- moving the brush in long, rough strokes -- encouraging the paint to drip, and splatter. I'm also interested in letting the painting paint itself -- to act primarily as a channel.