Artist Statement | Curriculum Vitae

I draw the disaffection and bewilderment myself and perhaps my audience feels as a result of technological advancements, plasticized sensitivity and sexual repression in a mediagenic climate. Drawing exists for me as a mode of cataloging sensations, crutches, vices and expunging unrest in a futile yet honest effort to keep up with the speed of humanity. Ink as a fluid medium is the most immediate and convenient means to mimic progression and control imagery. At times my projects are solutions to perceived problems or they assign imagery to sensations, contraptions, characters and other unseen phenomena that does not have the distinct pleasure of having a concrete visual companion. These two main tropes (characters, apparatuses) allow me to live beyond my means, nourishing a warped sense of self, multiple skewed identities, an assortment of odd personal history events to finally create a specific vernacular and codex. In addition to the visual works, I write short essays for individual projects and prepare many lists of related information. The lists for me serve as source material and perhaps, a type of prose to control text like drawings control lines. I often employ alliteration and other language tools and tricks that mimic the proxy contraption drawings. Proxy machines serve to provide what myself and my viewers think we want, need or desire. These drawn proxy machines rely upon imaginative and uncanny expectations. These flat faux apparatuses remove struggle and create a false but comforting sense of autonomy and reality suspension giving two-dimensional physicality to a request that can be trite, earnest or obsolete. They perform and produce items and outcomes that can only occur in a fictional realm. They were formally influenced by Rube Goldberg’s witty inventions and the complicated endeavors of Chuck Jones’ animated characters.

Using stream of consciousness techniques to resolve conjured or sometimes nagging notions; a prolific drawing practice is often the answer to the manufactured nature of contemporary culture. This process might be considered quasi-voyeuristic and often requires dramatic or drastic measures such as assuming an odd job or spending time in a space that offers exposure to many characters and/or machines and gadgets. Eavesdropping and wide-eyed observation fueled my childhood drawing practice that would later become a desk job hobby and many years after that, a professional project. I obsessively draw and write stories inspired by the wealth of electronically retrievable information and autobiographical fodder available to me. There are many obstacles, lines and complications but the result is simple; the machines eliminate struggle for its characters or believers. The machine drawings are ‘real’ and ‘figurative’ they require temporary belief suspension and connective inclinations.

In an effort to encompass every type of character I chance and provide the broadest spectrum possible, I often depict un-sexed or oversexed figures, the ‘genderful’, the neutered and the disparate spaces between. These composites characters tend to possess cross-cultural features. As a result of living in and visiting many cities, I tried to find unifying features or garments to unite several voices and cultures. Growing up in two remarkably different cities resulted in an onslaught of disparate styles, accents and traditions. The characters are sometimes cloaked in cross-cultural garments to protect them from their environment and to mask their identity if needed. The perception of a cloak could range from clergymen/women, a cult fanatic, a hijab wearer or a person in a simple hooded sweatshirt.