The act of drawing is simple by nature. All that is needed, at its most basic level, is a pencil, paper, and a willingness to create. This is what attracted me to it years ago. It was the immediacy and availability of it. It was so easy to access, yet so easy to get lost in for hours upon hours. On some level, this way of approaching art has not changed for me since childhood. My work focuses on simple beginnings not only in terms of materials, but in terms of the marks I choose to use for each piece as well. With a mark, or a variation of certain marks in mind, I create a system for the piece to function within. I’ll begin with bands of lines, 3-D cubes, circles of varying colors, or meandering waterfall-like lines for example, and let each mark’s individual characteristics decide how the piece will form. Once I’ve discovered what that system will be, I set out to explore within that framework, working on a piece for a long period of time. As opposed to cutting the amount of time it takes to produce a work, I’ll actually look to increase it, so that the piece is built up to a level that could only be achieved over time.
In my work I am not trying to hide anything, portray anything in particular, or fool anyone. My aim is to have every mark seem apparent and exist as a testimony that it was made, as was the one next to it, and next to it, and so on. Each mark, each mistake, each slight change in direction from my conscious and unconscious mind, minutely affects the rest of the piece like a pebble dropped into water. I want my drawings to be like a life. Even though they function within strict guidelines, each work grows according to its own history. If on the twenty-first day of working on a piece I make a small change, the rest of the time I spend on that piece has to take that change into consideration, and drawing will never be the same. Even within the strictest of orders that I impose on a drawing, it always finds a way to hold a surprise.
While my work is about drawing, process, and time, it is mostly about presence. Presence, in my mind, is the sum of those parts. It is the overall affect that the whole piece leaves on you. For my drawings, presence can only be achieved by pushing my mark-making to an obsessive end, where the parts create a larger whole that hopefully illuminate the humble components that comprise it. While the individual marks and nuances illustrate each moment and the passing of each second and minute, the changes and discoveries made along the way are only fully realized when seen in its entirety. It is this duality between the smaller components and the finished whole, between the micro and macro that my drawings lean upon. This duality allows the viewer to see the drawings in two lights: one as massive, time-consuming undertaking as evidenced by the accumulation of tiny marks and two as a completed whole as seen by the summation of the parts. You are given the end result and get to reflect on the moments that led up to it.
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