SignalsFrom Offshore (Seismic Still Life) Studio Window #6, Conté drawing on Stonehenge Cream paper, 22.5" x30"
This drawing is one in a series of surreal studio interior depictions utilizing traditional media and genre categories to represent the artist's studio as a locus of mystery, mythological occurrences, and altered consciousness. "Signals From Offshore" refers to the Cascadia Fault.
I utilize a realist approach –– and often the conventions of the still life –– to explore relationships between the depiction of concrete objects and the suggestion of the symbolic, between what can be regarded as material in a drawing or painting and the inference of something mysterious. I’m interested in the tension between significations of the present and the residue of the past. Over the past decade, my work has evolved toward the exploration of the referential nature of simple objects and figurative elements (especially the human hand) placed in the context of imagined art history sites or an allegorical composition. In some works, Renaissance subjects or religious themes are re-imagined in a modern, secular arena of skepticism and altered consciousness.