18″ x 24″ – Oil on Canvas

She Ends and Begins is painted from a digital photograph and from imagination. I intentionally pushed the contrast between warm skin tones with synthetic cool shadows. The intended effect was to create a psychological impact through color. Though the painting has a lot of color, it is visually quiet as the eyes gaze beyond the frame in a contemplative way.

9″ x 12″ – Oil on Canvas

Awake is a 9″ x 12″ portrait oil painting on canvas. Do you notice the two portraits? One with her eyes closed and the other with her eyes open and staring into the light above her. For me, upon further reflection, the portrait appears to shift between a waking and a sleeping state. There is an immediacy to the mark and a spontaneity to the painting that I miss in my other work and wanted to capture here.

The composition is derived from multiple poses and reassembled through paint. This piece is indicative of my current body of work conceived from a long standing interest in animation and the visual effect of movement and time. 

  24″ x 30″ – Canvas

“Touch” and “Squeezed” are my first attempts to collage and abstract the figure with the purpose of creating a new portrait. I pressed my face against the glass of a digital scanner. and rearranged those scans into the composition you see here. The smearing and smudging of the skin is the effect of moving while the scanner is running. The image is then digitally enhanced, cropped and melded together from multiple scans. I spend quite a bit of time with the digital aspect of the piece before it’s ready to paint or draw.

24″ x 30″ – oil on canvas

This painting is from a digitally manipulated and collaged picture of my son. The interesting part for me was that I asked my 4 year old son to compose the image. I asked him where to cut the face and where to crop and offset the image. It was a wonderful collaboration. If you swipe across the image you can see the various stages of completion.

20″ x 38″ – Oil on Canvas

The impetus behind blowfish is an oil painted animation. Blowfish is an unflattering self portrait, the animation is a loop of me pursing my lips and blowing. It is purposely Nonsensical and has no meaning.

“Facing you” is a larger than life painting of a nude female. This piece is indicative of my work at the time. It is both an exploration of paint, and a celebration of life, and how paint imbues a certain energy and meaning to the subject. In this piece in particular, I wanted to highlight her steadfast power. She is comfortable in her skin as she looks down upon the viewer.

“Unbreakable” is a larger than life painting of a nude female. This piece is indicative of my work at the time. It is both an exploration of paint, and a celebration of life, and how paint imbues a certain energy and meaning to the subject. In this piece in particular, I wanted to highlight her steadfast power.

Symmetry is a large colorful female nude oil painting. The paint application is thick on the belly and quickly fades into the gray gresso. The painting was created as a color, and paint application study. I chose to paint heavy and obese female subjects in this series of pieces to encourage me to work larger with more bold application of paint. There is beauty here in the larger and voluptuous rounded forms as well as the rich color.

The extra skin and flesh folds in on themselves creating a wonderfully complex and beautiful design.