“Skull-Digger” (Denticula 006)

Employing alternative methods, I look to challenge the boundaries of traditional art practices and mediums, specifically those related to the act of drawing. In reinterpreting printmaking processes, I’m pouring and pulling printer’s ink across a smooth paper surface with a large metal rule. The motion is rapid and tension is created by the concurrence of fluidity and precision. After pouring, my image evolves further as the ink pools and silts on the surface. I seek these graphic fluctuations as they contribute to a wide range of evocative forms.

Recurring images resemble hybrid specimens of plant life, insects or bodily viscera. Other drawings appear archaeological – excavated bone fragments come to mind. These varied allusions play between the extremes of the living and the dead, the animate and the reliquary. Polarity is echoed in the strong visual contrasts between black and white, transparency and opacity. Drawn simultaneously from both process and phenomena, this intermediary space that these polarities co-inhabit is a domain I’m actively investigating.

Titles are comprised of both verb and noun, linking the process of drawing to an action and the resulting image to an object or “bi-product” of the primary action. I often denote a classification after the phrase to underscore scientific references and to subvert the laden emotions implied in the initial catchword. This dual-coded message, including the visual/verbal exchange between image and text, create undercurrents of meaning that inscribe more complex textual experiences. The direct relationship between text, the rendered image and viewer is then emphasized.