Biography

My interests are centered around the narrative. Re-contextualizing occurrences into allegories and personifications I use an alchemist approach, transforming dreams, intimate conversations, objects and things into the affecting. Within each narrative, I use iconography to create a representation that stands somewhere between reality and illusion. Interested in themes of passion, self-doubt, inner struggle, and introspection I create art that depicts transmogrifications concurrently developing visions with glimpses into multicultural worlds of religion, politics, health and family.

The process of making the work requires detailed and elaborate production. Attention is paid toward the research of texts, symbols, and historical data associated with each piece before the work is planned. Once the location or setting is considered, makeup and wardrobe artists as well as a crew of lighting assistants, actors and sometimes illustrators are brought in to help bring the vision to life. Most work is drawn to scale in advance of its execution with careful attention to blocking and lighting. Ultimately working toward creating something that draws the viewer in through a mixture of beauty, reverence, disregard, ugliness, and tension.

My exploration of the visual arts synthesizes my skills in filmmaking, lighting, design, design production and photography to produce Photographic Translations, an ongoing series of staged psychological dramas, and The Twelve, which depicts a reincarnation of the Apostles as urban messengers en route to spread “good news”. My newest endeavor, Straights, Fags, Squares, Gaspars, Dugans, Jacks, and Kools — further explores the question of formal representation through re-contextualizing cigarettes as portraits of the people who smoke them.

Commissions include private interests as well as collaborations with designers, art directors and creative directors for such distinguished clients as Adobe, ATT, Boeing, DDB, Hasbro, IBM, Microsoft and the University of Washington.