My work is an exploration of the theme of the Diva – the flamboyantly uninhibited female and the personal and political empowerment she represents. As a painter, graphic artist, and animator I have been inspired by puppets and absurdist theatre. As subject matter, the images I am often concerned with are puppet –like characters reminiscent of Alferd Jarry’s forerunner of Absurdist theater, Ubu-Roi; the buffoons of modernist playwright Michel de Ghelderode and the symbolist and political figures of European puppet theater.
As a point of departure, there is a degree of abstraction in a puppet. I find this to be a freeing force, giving me considerable license to explore colorist and gestural solutions to the depiction of contradictions these images embody: awkward yet fluid, wooden yet alive, constrained yet brashly extroverted personalities, often yet mischievous, egotistical, erotic, even magical exaggerations of human behavior. I have developed some of these diva and puppet-inspired works into animated films requiring thousands of drawings. The process of animation has, in turn, influenced my full scale works-on-paper producing diptychs, triptychs, and serial prints with progressive deviations.
On a formal level, I think of myself as a colorist who is interested in the interaction between color, line and gesture and in the complex and suggestive depiction of interior character motivation and personality through graphic means. Most of my work is on Arches, BFK, or handmade paper. A paper surface allows me the ability to explore a mixed palette of color media with a calligraphic freedom that would be inhibited on canvas.
I currently teach fashion drawing at Drexel University and drawing for fashion and architecture at Philadelphia University. I hold an MFA from Pratt Institute and an honors BFA from York University.
My work has been exhibited both nationally and abroad; I am currently represented by Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in NYC, and GalleriEChiz in Pittsburgh.