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Artist Bio |
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Working as an art therapist has helped me to develop a certain acceptance for my impulses and the time it takes to see them out. This is a rather fundamental concept, but essential to just about everything in life. When I was young I began to draw and kept it mostly to myself. As I got older I spent more time working in sketchbooks, studying some life drawing, all in a very concrete sort of way. For many years afterward I painted large and solitary figures alone in my basement in Nebraska. They were rarely seen. In 2004 I resigned my teaching position and moved to New York, eventually settling in Bushwick. The totemic figures began to mingle. They started to spread out and sometimes they wore clothes, as if they wanted to show up in real life. They became rather infatuated with different symbols of the urban landscapes, such as manhole covers, and streetlights. During this time I was studying for my art therapy degree and working at various psychiatric hospitals and therapeutic art settings, as well as within the public schools. I worked on some community murals with children and adolescents and as a teaching artist within the public schools in the Bronx. All of these shared experiences influenced my work. Now at times painting seems like such a crowded endeavor. Every painting tries to encompass everything, the individual and the totality. Currently I have been working on longer, slower paintings that begin as brief but stark moments and then as I am painting I consider all the different connections of that experience to all the other moments I experience. I have also begun new paintings inspired by photographs by Colin Ward of children in the city. Collaboration has been a large part of finding connections with the world around me. I have been performing live with KMBS and Snazz Mammoth for the past two years, drawing spontaneously in response to the movement of the music. I have also been working on drawings and paintings in response to writing by author Susan Scutti.
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