Artist Statement
A resident of New York City and rural Pennsylvania my work is informed by common notions of city and country that emerge from dissimilar studio locations. The ideas at times mingle conversationally; at times are put in sharp contrast. Small-scale landscape oils develop within the rolling dairy region of eastern Pennsylvania. Compositions embrace an impression of underpopulated, unspoiled pastoral possibility. Larger paper pieces in black and white, or monochromatic ink, find reference in the urban exhaust, industrial fumes, and belching smoke of city environments, suggesting complications of industry and climate. I study sky behavior, am drawn to storms, broad horizons, man-made clouds, and the like where distance becomes the subject and description loosens into abstraction. The edge between description and abstraction is my primary motivation. Neither sets of images include representations of people. Yet, the human element is implicit in every image in that one body of work represents an ideal environment, the other a traumatized one.