Fine Artist and Illustrator
These are all examples of my drawing style. Most of these are pen and ink, but there are some charcoal and ink wash drawings as well. I like to switch between mixed media and drawing. Often, i'll do a series of black and white drawings that are pen and ink, and then do a series of works that are mixed media. The line between sketches and drawings can be vague, but as a general rule I consider drawings to be richer in build-up.
August 2012, intended as a backdrop for a short film directed by Michael Ficara
Think of these as neither painting nor drawing but a hybrid of the two. Pen and ink on drums, watercolors on bass guitar, air brush on synthesizer, acrylic paint on lead guitar, paint marker on vocals.
2008. Colored pencil, chalk pastel, watercolor and pen and ink on paper.
These images are made with only paint, or only one type of paint. They are primarily acrylic, although there are watercolors and oils here too. Painting is a crucial part of working in mixed media, as it allows you work in a loose, quick fashion. Many of these were a part of my thesis series "Almost Too Much." Here is the Abstract, an excerpt from the published, 70-something page thesis:
“Almost Too Much” is an installation of twenty-five still-life paintings that examine eldritch imagery by juxtaposing combinations of obtuse, obscure, and grotesque man-made objects. The plasticity of the objects grants them a mannequin-like remove from the decaying, gritty post-consumer dystopia that they allude to. The paintings are shrines to neglected objects that are organic and artificial alike.
There is a dialogue between the objects depicted, and the mood of their interaction is reflected in the dominant color of the painting. When viewed as a cohesive installation the units form a gridlock of adjacent universes. Each painting acts as a doorway into an artificial season.
The paintings are developed with inconsistent degrees of focus and depth. There is no set distance at which to appreciate them. From afar, the bright colors and energetic lines are attractive, but from closer distances a disturbing undercurrent sharpens its clarity. A metaphor I could liken these paintings to is a carnival. As we approach the carnival, all we can see are bright, colorful lights and the Ferris wheel. Our first visions of it are the most enchanting because they are the least magnified.
Once we are walking are within the carnival we begin to recognize its less magical qualities: The vomit near the trashcan; the underpaid tilt-a-whirl workers; the cigarette butts and broken glass that sear the ground. The title “Almost Too Much” references the elusive nature of comfortable distance. At what length are we best able to read a painting? When is it too close? These are not detail-oriented, hyperrealist depictions, nor are they conscious abstractions. They are fantastical still-life paintings intended to complicate the line between visual pleasure and abrasive excess.
This page is for what I call detours: Artwork that isn't finished enough to be good, but isn't ambitious enough to be bad. So they represent those times when my ego has it's guard down, and I can have fun and cut loose.
This work was created primarily during 2010-2011, when I first began incorporating paint marker heavily into my work. This was a key addition, as it gave my mark making a more urban sensibility. (I sort of thought of paint markers at the time as the water-based answer to the oil paint stick.) It also imbued the surface of my drawings with a messy rawness, particularly when the paint markers would not cooperate and the paint would run. This contributed to the idea of entropy in my work; when some of the materials are not cooperating fully with the artist, it adds a slight sense of struggle to the overall image, which also indicates the passage of time. Eventually my materials would evolve and branch out beyond the deco-color brand I was using at the time. I began using acrylic ink and dip pens to mimic the paint-marker look, particularly when those markers began to break down. Eventually I wised up and began using different glazes on my work that would be kinder to the paint makers. Nowadays, I use the paint markers surprisingly little. I really see the drawing itself as the essential basis of the work now, and the paint markers as final-stage embellishments. However, this was a unique era in which I believed that the paint markers were a means to an end.
