As I work in the studio, what’s become innate in my approach is to reach for a combined sense of vulnerability and strength, a duality that has come to underlie all of my art. In my sculpture the core surface material is gauze, and of late tree branches that extend the work to the floor. The underlying fragility of the materials is intentional and serves as a metaphor for our own vulnerability in life, both physical and emotional. This method of working developed out of my own concerns for how people suffer the consequences of trauma inflicted on them, how that thing we call ‘body’ becomes marked by such experience, and how that ‘body’ then carries within it the whole history of what we have lived.

    I work at a human scale, so that these structures can generate a physical and emotional encounter  between viewer and work, placing them face to face, body to body, one with the other, as if it were possible for a conversation to take place, for thoughts to be shared. For this reason, intimacy is an essential part of the experience, so that for a few moments we can feel alone, absorbed in the presence of the ‘other’. And so these pieces are placed in a subdued and quiet ‘space’, lit from above, creating a certain contrast between light and shadow that reveals their inherent drama. 

    In my drawing, until recently only graphite and pencil have been my tools for exploring the tenuous balance, or its loss, that is found at the center of human relationships. Color has now been added into this work, although in an understated way. These drawings began as a means for understanding something of the primitive origins of line and mark as they evolved into visual and written language. Through this process, meaning eventually rooted itself into the drawings, while continuing to make use of those early origins.

    Overall, I suppose my focus is on human nature, its vulnerabilities, its will to survive and the subconscious dramas that lie beneath our awareness of both ourselves and others.