Looking back



Topography II, c. 1998,

mixed media 24x24"



Before I can talk about what I am doing right now, I feel like I should go backwards a bit.  Where did all of this start?  In university I was a confirmed painter - when you are an artist, that's what you do, or so I thought.  My paintings were alright, but I kept trying to add things to them... bits of text or drawings, found bits of ephemera.  Later, the paint got mixed with wax, and then sand, and I was creating textured 'paintings' that weighed in excess of twenty pounds.  Things became more satisfying at this point, but the added 'stuff' still didn't work as cohesively as I wanted.

By this time I had begun to collect things.  I discovered the work of Joseph Cornell.  I started to think about the objects themselves, and stopped worrying about being a 'painter'.  Things became more interesting.