My work is about the urban experience. The old and abandoned buildings which can be found in most major urban centers hold a particular fascination for me. The utilitarian architectural style employed in these buildings offers a simple honesty refreshingly devoid of the decorative trickery of residential and commercial structures. Their story is told not with stick-on accessories but by the scars of past retrofits and the accumulation of paint, sign writing, posters and graffiti. The beauty which results from these layers of history is inadvertent and often surprising.
This visual honesty and simplicity extends to the smaller scale artifacts of the urban environment: fire hydrants, hand-painted signs, public phones, sliding hooks outside a commercial laundry, and bicycles – all of these have featured in my work.
The abandoned spaces I have encountered on my many urban explorations have inspired work which focuses on emptiness following the recent departure of humans: a chair in an old railway station, mattresses in an old dormitory, a grading card in a disused shooting range. This is the building’s story written on the inside. The posters, hand-painted signs, and graffiti tell their story on the outside.
My body of work could be described as urban archeology, documenting evidence of the interaction between people and their built environment.
The paintings which result from my enjoyment of the urban tapestry are often structural assemblages of pre-painted panels depicting color, texture, signage and architectural proportions. This patchwork multi-panel technique reflects the visual fragmentation and rhythm of the city around me.
For more on my artistic process……..
I work on several wood panels at the same time, building up layers of paint, posters and stencils, often incorporating drawings of urban artifacts or signage. The panels will then be combined to create a larger piece upon which more layers may be added. Compositional consideration begins only when several panels are placed together on the studio floor and the “patchwork” emerges. This process, with its fragmentation, spontaneity and acceptance of accident, becomes in itself an extension of the chaotic and colorful urban environment by which it is inspired. For more on this multi-panel process watch a short TV interview with me in my studio.
My current work explores the repetition of architectural modules in pier buildings found at the water’s edge around San Francisco and New York. I am using the same unplanned development of separate panels but am inserting compositional planning earlier in the process so that the final painting is more recognizable as a place rather than an impression.