Statement

Comics, paintings on a wall—a familiar presentation, twisted and blended, the edges between the two blurred, so that the familiar becomes strange and surprising. My  new work incorporates multiple art forms (cartoons, comix, painting, scientific illustration, illuminated manuscripts), multiple mediums (pencil, ink, shellac, egg tempera, enamel, water miscible oils), and multiple conceptual frameworks that allow me to explore a multiplicity of ideas (political, philosophical, cultural, etc.) from multiple points of view. It issues an invitation to interpretation through learned methodologies as well as a hindrance to easy interpretation that encourages a new way of looking at visual art. The paintings themselves both look “like paintings” and like the original artwork for comics. Challenges to the artist’s/author’s authority are not only welcome but encouraged; meaning is mysterious and often obfuscated (sometimes literally, as when words are erased or covered over or blend into one another). The paintings are begun in the traditional method of glue/chalk gesso on wood panel, and the framework for the work is the comics panel. Within that framework elements from painting, illustration, comics, comix, cartoons, illuminated manuscripts, and other artifacts are added and juxtaposed, as are the various mediums associated with those art forms. The current series, Retablos of Lamentation from the Future, incorporates elements of the single panel daily comic strip, retablos, genre paintings, and the idea of moral symbolism and personal devotion from Dutch still life paintings from the 17th century. 

Bio

Born and raised in Texas, the son of a Southern Baptist preacher, and educated at the University of Texas and the Ohio State University, Among my honors and awards are numerous individual artist’s fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, a Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Fellowship, and the Ohio Arts Council Artist in Residence Fellowship at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. My work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in New York, Boston, Memphis, Tulsa, and many other cities throughout the U.S. I primarily showed my work at the Fischbach Gallery in New York City.