This body of work is driven by my passion for exploring the human condition. This has been a life long need. My work is based on and inspired by several sources, including extensive reading and travel, and it features those who are often disenfranchised from society at large. Ranging from issues such as sex trafficking and abusive violence, to those who suffer from mental and physical illnesses and disabilities, all seem to share an essential element: a disquieting sense of vulnerability and innocent suffering. This is particularly true of the severely disabled children with whom I volunteer in Antigua, Guatemala, in a hospital/orphanage run by Franciscan monks.

Described as “raw and disturbing” (Bruce Samuelson), many of these pieces have evolved slowly as I sought to find ways to express these darker aspects of human life. Beginning abstractly, with expressive gestures, marks and tonal elements, figurative elements emerge as the paper is worked and reworked, often over a period of weeks or even months. The end results are rarely foreseen; the process is one of development and dissolution, waiting to find what might come out on the paper. Sometimes the images come easily but most often they are only formed over time. I want each to have a dignity and strength in its own right.

It is my goal to create works with meaning and energy, texture and history. I employ processes of making art that contribute to those qualities in my work. I like the bareness and immediacy of drawing, the “delicacy and mutability” of paper, as I throw myself into expressing that which is on my mind and in my heart. An additional goal is to explore the integration of figurative and abstract modes of thinking, drawing and painting, and to push the boundaries therein.