Artist Statement

It is fair to say that one of the main interests I have always had in the making of art is the nature of the image. The image is slippery. It instantly seduces. Its’ meaning morphs and changes with time and with each person who gazes upon it. It is precisely this strange looseness of meaning, this confluence of symbols and contexts, this pocket of enigmatic energy that I am so drawn to. As such, I look for contradictions in my imagery. I prefer the enigma to the reasoned argument and I try to reflect that in my art. Moreover, this space where meaning breaks down and words fail is appropriate because my subject is not easily defined.
I cannot (though I often wish I could) easily box my meaning and present it with a bow for anyone who cares to read my thoughts. My thoughts, and more importantly my feelings, are so often a blur in the corner of my mind’s eye. If they were easy; if they were structured; I would simply write them down and altogether forego the laborious effort of crafting an image. The image and its’ enigmatic and complex nature more closely articulates what verbal language fails to. In short, if I am to be honest, any meaning or narrative to be found in my imagery should be sought after therein and not in any accompanying document. It is the abject monster; the place where symbols collide like warring titans that leave us stunned and senseless that has always held sway over my personal aesthetic. I do not wish to clinically analyze my work as much of the power of the imagery in my work comes from not consciously knowing.
It is important to me that my imagery affects on an emotional level preferring to leave the academic analysis to the scholar. That is academia’s cross to bear. My cross has always been of a different sort. In a way, I feel that applying an exacting narrative to the symbols I use takes away from what I consider to be their intrinsic authority, and so, I am hesitant to ascribe meaning to them after the fact in an effort to convince the viewer of some overarching intent or plan. While this work is cohesive as a body, I can honestly say it was not by careful planning that it became so. I choose to control only the medium, craft, and composition while allowing the symbols to form in a more organic way. I find my images in family photographs, daydreams, magazines, and while surfing the web. I stitch them together on a computer screen and then tear them apart again until something not of my conscious mind speaks to me of their importance. Perhaps that is why writing a statement is so difficult. I hope my work is as fragmented, confused, and beautiful as the world I see. I hope those that look at my work feel its effect (as opposed to think its meaning) are seduced by its craft and are swallowed by what they cannot articulate. It is not thought nor meaning that I wish to present, but a feeling; a strange feeling that you have seen this before and you are somehow connected. Joseph Campbell put it this way in his acceptance of the medal of honor of the National Arts Club.
“I was giving people the key to the realm of the muses, which is where myth is. The seat of the soul is there where the inner and the outer worlds meet. The outer world is what you get in scholarship. The inner world is your response to it; and it is where these come together that we have the mythos. The outer world changes with historical time. The inner world is the world of anthropose. It is the world constant to the human race. And so, you have throughout the mythological systems, a constant. You always have the sense of recognizing something. And what you’re recognizing is your own inward life, and at the same time, the infliction through history. And the problem with making the inner meet with the outer of today is of course, the function of the artist.”

That said, an artist’s statement does hold some use as catharsis. As such, I will attempt to untangle some of the symbols, and to the best of my ability describe for you what was on my mind when I conceived of and later created this most recent body of work.
I have always drawn my life. That is to say, I have found that no matter how pedestrian or mundane the main thrust of my daily routine; it is there within my rituals, thoughts, and dreams, that I find the finest fodder for imagery. As life would have it I have recently and quite unexpectedly become a new father; and if there is one overarching theme to my recent work it is the honest exploration of my own feelings toward becoming and being the patriarch. The operative word here is honest; as it is easy to fall into a pit of sentimentality when dealing with images of your own children. However, my intent was never to exalt the image of the father nor the child. There are enough Hallmark images of family out there without my adding to them. While I must admit that there is an element of sentimentality to the nature between a parent and child, the truer nature of the relationship is infinitely more complex. Words often fall short of the mark when one attempts to verbalize this relationship in any overarching terms. It is a relationship of affection and pride, yes; but also it is a relationship of complex fears, jealousy and control. We tend to wrap this complex relationship into one four-letter word, love. But the truth is that the connection between a parent and child is not one that can be bound by language or reason. It is not clearly structured or delineated, but rather it takes place somewhere past the boundaries of the conscious mind and resides within the instinctual programming of the animal.
The first image in this series is appropriately the first image of my daughter made available to me. It is based closely from a 4-D ultrasound photograph provided to my wife and I at around the halfway point of her pregnancy. As with all of my work, the original image was translated into a digital format and then altered in Photoshop until I felt that it had been cropped and filtered into something more interesting and essential for use as reference material. The title, I Hear You Dream, refers to the phenomenon of REM sleep as it is observed in the early development of the fetus. It seemed peculiar to me that a dream could take place while the child remained in a uterine stasis. We are, to the best of my knowledge, symbol based animals. Moreover, we understand our symbols based entirely on a structure of comparison to other symbols. We understand light only when we compare it to dark. We understand warmth only after we have been cold, etc. I wondered what a person might dream while floating in that primordial fluid. Without perception of time or space, wakefulness or sleep; without an image or language, or even eyes in which to see, where does the mind wonder? What do we dream before we are indoctrinated into the society of humanity?
The second image was that of birth. Titled Bearing Separation, the viewer is presented with an image of the child being pulled from that stasis into the world. The hands of the father and the body of the child are bonded together in the act. Here one of the classical Freudian roles of the patriarch is made clear. The father is the other. He is the outside force by which the infant is initiated into the realm of the society. While this is the most abrupt and literal instance of this paradigm, the same pattern will continue throughout the child’s life hereafter.
As Freud saw it, of all animals, humans remain the longest at the their mothers breast. A child is born unable to survive the new world of which she now finds herself. Consequently, she is dependent on her mother for sustenance and protection. The mother and child constitute for months after birth as a duel unit both physically and psychologically. The mother represents for the child the entire known universe. The unfortunate father becomes the first intrusion of an outside force into this universe. He removes the child from her mother’s breast. He competes for attention and affection and because of this, the father is primarily perceived by the child as the enemy.
While this seems clear enough I think it is important to iterate that the function of the maternal and paternal archetypes (after birth) are not bound by gender. They are roles that can and often are played by both the male and female, or in some cases of child rearing; male and male, or female and female caregivers. In any case, it is this basic nursery soap opera that in Freud’s estimation forms the basis for a great deal of the child’s understanding of the world of which she will continually integrate.
As the notion of birth pertains to this piece, it is important to acknowledge that there is always the specter of death implicit within such a radical transformation. It is a birth into a new world and at the same time, a death to the old. While father and child meet for the first time, mother and child are physically severed from one another. This contradiction of signifiers (simultaneous new life and death) fascinates me to no end and remains a theme pervasive throughout my work.
The father, as ogre or enemy, is also pervasive throughout this series. The father represents something outside of the child’s known spectrum of understanding. He is the other. His touch is alien and his power, once unleashed, is undeniable. He represents the first radical departure from nourishment and safety; but contradictory to this, he is also the great protector.
All gods unrecognized appear monstrous. I have attempted to explore this strange relationship through a series of drawings where the patriarch figure (me) is depicted holding his progeny. In these drawings the child is often seen as being restrained in such a way that the intent of the patriarch is not clear. He may be carefully and gently holding the child against his own body, but he may also be causing some distress to the child by holding her too tightly to the point of suffocation. It is here in these drawings that the reptilian scales appear. They can be read as a metaphor depicting the instinctual unconscious space where a parent’s love resides. They also operate nicely as a metaphor for the genetic bond between the parent and child in the piece titled Progeny. The pattern of the child’s skin (scales) becomes evident as she grows. It is in large part predetermined by the pattern of her fathers skin (scales). The serpent is often associated with death in our western culture, but throughout other world mythologies it is also closely related to the lifecycle. The scales of a snake are slogged off and it made new again (or reborn) countless times throughout its’ life.
My work has recently shifted. Perhaps it is that the shock of becoming a parent has now given way to actually being a parent. Perhaps it is something that I do not yet grasp. For whatever reason, it seems that the images I have discussed and the many more that I have drawn but not discussed, are giving way to something else. New images such as the bull seem to now hold sway over me. Again, I am not one to over-analyze my imagery and so I won’t speculate much further as to why this is, but I will leave you with this thought. This is a body of work that I view to be some of the finest imagery I have ever produced, however, the work is not done. Like my daughter, or perhaps as it is with me, the work is constantly evolving into something very different than what it has been. She is maturing and at the same time being indoctrinated into the societies of family and culture. She now walks and talks and has an insatiable desire to explore her new world. This new world is one of dreams and demons that are based more on a shared culture with common historical symbols. We are now, more than ever, part of the same world. We share a language, and though I do not claim to know what will come; I suspect that our simultaneous shifts from infant to little girl and from new father to simply father, will continue to radically affect the imagery of this series as it moves onward.