Artist, Painter and Professor of Painting and Drawing.

Artist Statement:

After years of using myself as a model and declaring that my paintings are not self-portraits, I have come to the conclusion that they absolutely were. Perhaps it was this realization that led to my break with posing for my own pictures. The first crack in the mirror was the Catlike series. The impetus for it was my own tale about a Maneki Neko statue that had enough of its immobility and came to life. I imagined the Japanese beckoning cat as a girl and what behaviors and gestures it would have learned from the real cats that had moved, lived and slept around her. Through mimicry I became someone else discovering a body language and set of gestures unlike my own. The second crack was an exercise in shape shifting. I tried to transform my physical self and the expectation of the figure with unusual poses that abstracted my body into shapes. The third and final crack was the use of masks used to complicate the reading of the figure. Although identity is hidden in the Wanderlust triptych the figure's head behind the mask is revealed to various degrees. Emotion projected but expression obscured.

The figures in the recent paintings are no longer me. They are friends or foes or curious strangers. How people choose to present themselves to the world is like a story wanting to be read. I pay attention to appearances that veer away from the norm. I find the various efforts people make to appear a certain way fascinating. Posing and posturing, the self-conscious are friends of my world. My paintings of people are very much about initial impressions. A first impression of someone is already picture. I impose on what the sitter is revealing; make-up, bigger hair, patterned fabrics, embroidery and lace. My baubles mix with theirs. I sculpt a world around the figure and document it. Capturing awareness, awkwardness, little gestures and fleeting things like glances. Sometimes letting the seams show. I am interested in translating my experience of looking at a photograph into paint. I have no interest in replication. These are not portraits they are collisions between the sitter and my world.

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