For much of my artistic life, my sculpture has been a response to a long term investigation of the transient nature of the human figure. My starting point in the creative process begins with simple materials such as wax, plaster and clay and after a process of maturation and is finally formed into glass, bronze and ceramic.
Each of these materials becomes a word in a growing vocabulary, allowing me the possibility to express more with the properties of the particular substance. I am seduced anew by the tension between the advantages and limitations that each presents. Each one teaches me about the other and causes a situation of cross pollination. Each one is a process that involves intensities of heat integral to the final transformation of one substance giving way to another. The intrinsic qualities of these materials speak to the corresponding strengths, frailties, and the innumerable mutable as well as unexpected states of humanness. They also become a paradigm for the cycles of nature through the symbolic transposition of these aspects to specific materials used within each of the art works.
Through my work I attempt to offer an insight as to what this sense of humanity leads to in terms of my own experience. I believe that the figure becomes an appropriate vehicle allowing me to address the larger concerns of the human condition. It is very important that my work can reach across social, economic, and cultural barriers reaching back to that time when art was not a separate function of life and spoke a more integrated universal and sacred language.
My time spent in the living libraries of Latin American jungles, amidst various indigenous peoples has profoundly influenced my art. My participation on scientific expeditions as well as my own explorations has allowed access to remote and pristine ecosystems where people still live in direct interface with nature. Numerous onsite sketches of rain forest botanical exuberance becomes an internal depository of the many varied elements of plant anatomy, leaf, stem, sepal, seed, stamen, stigma, blossom, and thorn that form a lexicon of symbolic natural elements which inform and infuse my work with an inherent intelligence.
The close observation from nature metamorphosed into my own vision of natural forms much in the same way that my dual interest in human forms has also progressed. I became intensively focused on the understated, little appreciated, relationship of humanity with the plant kingdom, which despite our efforts to destroy it sustains our existence upon this planet. Two emergent themes of my visual universe come forth in the consistent portrayal of the human form and the dynamics of organic plant forms as sharing a common morphology. This correlation led to an almost unconscious intermingling of both kinds of shapes in the resultant final image or object where the somatic knowledge of each resonates within the other in the manifestation of hybrid forms. This work seems to come of a compulsion to 're-bioengineer' the concept of the human species, co-mingling the structural elements of both but stressing plant-like sensibilities.
Through my artwork I intend to visually engage the viewer and communicate the importance of human relationships and interaction with the biological wealth that delights, surrounds and sustains us. I hope to integrate the sometimes separate disciplines of art, science, conservation and the natural world into a seamless visual experience that can affect a subtle shift in perception.