Exploring Chicago architecture and el tracks in ink and Yupo paper. Yupo is a synthetic paper that allows ink to be washed off or rubbed away like charcoal resulting in “inky, Dickensian” landscapes (as a friend described them). I may paint the same scene more than once; partly this is because I have learned something […]
I started using watercolors in 2009. Initially, this move was driven by a commercial impulse to produce affordable work that I could make and sell more quickly. I was also between studio spaces and watercolors were more compact and less toxic (cats + oil primer = disaster). I began drawing from source material for many […]
Animals are our friends and muses. Cats have long figured in art. In Egypt, they were associated with the goddesses Isis and Ba’at, the jaguar in Mesoamerican culture is a spirit companion and has the ability to cross between worlds, lions in European heraldry traditionally symbolize bravery, valor, strength, and royalty (the king of beasts). […]
My education as a painter is rooted in the figure so it is always something that I return to. Several of these portraits are commissions or people that I know. Others are based on photographs that I have found or taken.
In 2003 I was working on graduating from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, waiting tables, and beginning to show my art. Mike Miller, owner of Delilah’s, saw some of my bar scene paintings at a Wicker Park art festival called Around the Coyote (now defunct) and asked me to create a series of work based […]
The urban landscape is always changing. Buildings are torn down to be replaced, built up, and town down again. Graffiti tags an empty lot, weeds grow in every direction. I am seeking a moment that, when painted, transcends mundane expectations to reveal an intensely present experience in the varied strokes of paint. For example, “Woman Walking,” […]
Chicago’s El Tracks have a distinct sense of place and history. The overhead tracks are old, rusted, with layers of paint, graffiti, posters, and garbage. Having to run to catch or stand and wait for the train or bus in all types of weather and among all types of people is a quintessential aspect of city living. […]
Fast food restaurants promise to fulfill the basic human need of food and society but, in fact, they replace the sustenance of both good food and community with a “custom” isolated “meal on the go”. Productivity wins again, ensuring that even our free time is spent multi-tasking and without being present in the moment. Night […]
From our earliest efforts to communicate who we are by drawing our “home”, the square with the triangle on top, home is an archetypal symbol. These house portraits explore home as an organic structure that has a natural lifespan. The architecture of “home” – the house itself – is a vessel for shared human experience […]