Artist’s Notes - 2007

It is difficult for an artist to take on cultural and social issues of the day, and even more difficult to find modus operendii for incorporating them into the scope of one’s daily process. My art has always assumed a certain custody of the here and now and I remember a time when it was much more difficult to find enough usable visual resource to in practice seize the day. Both Goya and Manet introduced into painting, with even greater difficulty during their generations, straightforward documentation that exposed brutalities that would resonate through the ages. For artists today there is easier access not only to an event but to its antecedents and aftermaths as well with visual material being only a click away. I assemble appropriations from New York Times photography, the final product becoming watercolor pencil and encaustic over linen. My paintings juxtapose readable, ineluctable imagery and offer cultural speculation.