Laguna College of Art + Design

My current body of work explores notions of mortality, vulnerability, loss, and

survival. Over the last decades, these ideas have shaped my emotional landscape and have

led to an investigation of the psychological and physiological circumstances that inundate us

amidst our greatest hardships. Anthropomorphic compositions of butchered animals and

images of human detritus denote moments of pain and loss. These images are juxtaposed

with paintings of my children—moments alluding to the hope, innocence, and joy of youth,

of parenthood, and of life’s unadulterated moments. Blurring the boundaries of traditional

and contemporary modes of representation, the combined oeuvre is interconnected through

visual tropes, repeating visual archetypes, and emotive resonance. Influenced by artists

including Rembrandt van Rijn, Francisco Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, Gerhard Richter and

Anselm Kiefer, I employ the visual rhetoric of the sublime, the intimate, and the bittersweet

to create a study in the emotional disparities that define the human experience.