As a child, I remember seeing a reproduction of a detail from Giotto’s Kiss of Judas that I kept going back to. It was the aged physicality of the surface, the paint application, the magic of the detail defining the whole, the layering of color with time and the rather brutish beautifulness of the image that made it compelling and jarring at the same time. These notions have always played in my background.
My drawings and sculptural paintings act as found mementos, referencing art historical memories or reminiscence of place. Using the tropes of artifact or souvenir, there is a somewhat askew anchor to familiarity. The connection to the past can comfort, disturb, amuse, challenge perceptions, and bring us to the place of comfort in memory, and beauty in loss.
Currently based in Chicago, I received my undergraduate and graduate degrees in painting from Wayne State University in Detroit. I've been an AIR at Palazzo Rinaldi, Noepoli (Basilicata), Italy and at Arte Studio Ginestrelle in Assisi, Italy.