The Collage of Life

Modern life is a collage of the real, the perceived, and the imagined. Everyday walking down the street I am deluged by advertisements, panhandlers, noises, smells,. Words and images pop up out of the sidewalk like flowers, people talking, moving living. The intangibles are there as well : emotions, hopes, prayers, and attractions. These all swim around me in the sea of life as I go about my day.
The collages I make are an attempt to capture a moment in time, a thought , or a group of thoughts on one subject. Often I start out with a simple painting on a piece of board. This is building the interior of the painting. Much of the time, the things going on within each of us is very simple and primal, very similar to the blobs of paint that comprise the bottom layers of these works. Next I build up the surface with brightly colored oil pastels and methodically placed pencil marks. The pastels add color and life to the open areas and also create a psychadelic and exciting field of vision. The pencil marks are often surrounding the oil pastels to unify and balance the bold color with obsessive line and precision. At this point I usually apply a collage element, bringing the painting into the world of narrative and dialogue. Up until this time I usually just create without much ambition as to what it is I’m trying to make. For this reason, many of the works have a zen quality underlying the more tangible statement of the collage elements. Words and numbers can serve to either de-mystify, or even further subvert a direct read of what the piece is about. The final layer of these collages is usually a matte medium finish to unify the different media and create a flat viewing plane; this layer also makes the works much more durable and archival.
The work is both public and private, obsessive , and wild. It is influenced by growing up as a punk teenager in the nineties as well as studying at a Zen Buddhist monastery in the Mountians, traveling