Updated Artist Statement

"An Unlived History"

Overview of recent work

As an artist, my goal is to capture an elegiac quality in subjects both animate and inanimate. A phrase that, I believe, encapsulates my most recent work is “an unlived history.” A central theme of my work is memory—what informs memory, how does it change over time, why is that memories are often romanticized…or how is it that nostalgia or trauma often color memory accordingly. Other related ideas contained here involve questions of identity and belief. Much of my previous work contains a thread of the autobiographical since I believe there is an authenticity to creating personally-revelatory bodies of images.

In the work presented here, I have used found family photographs and an historical process that combine to evoke memories faded by time. The twist in this new work is that the images are not of my own family history: they are images obtained from rolls of film found in old thrift store cameras. The role of the viewer of these works is to—through the process of psychological transference—infuse the images with their own assumed narratives. Since family photographs are a universal feature of most peoples’ lives, the intention of these images is to serve as a form of archetypical substitute to evoke memories of the viewer’s own past.

What I continually strive against in my artistic endeavors is ‘to make pretty pictures;’ rather, I’d prefer to create compelling, thoughtful works of art. Each of the images presented here is a unique, one-of-a-kind print made by contact printing an image from a digitized negative to stained cold-press watercolor paper using the van Dyke brown photographic printing method. Each print measures 22 inches by 30 inches.

I generally would resist the temptation to compare my work with that of others. However, for the sake of reference, I would suggest that the inspiration for much of my work is someplace in the realm of the Zen-like minimalism of Minor White and the stark, revelatory imperfection of the human condition exposed by the WPA photographers (i.e. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange)

Themes that reoccur in my creative work include longing, loss, psychological remoteness, elegy and alienation. The purpose of the art I create is to communicate my interest in individual psychology, existentialist philosophy, and memory. My work invites viewers to better understand their own life experiences by activating memories—perhaps long-forgotten—of times past by presenting what I believe to be archetypical images from my own (or, in this current body of work) others’ histories. The desired effect is not necessarily nostalgic since, in my view, nostalgia carries the positive connotation of yearning. In each work I hope to capture a snapshot of loss and longing, a glimpse into something that reminds viewers that life is too brief; ultimately memories and objects are all that remain.

This link contains a sampling of the work described here:
Here are some useful links to a couple of reviews of my recent work from a 2020 exhibition in Chicago:

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