Artist Statement

As an artist, I try to explore form in objects that people are very familiar with; cars.  My eyes are attracted to the pure art and steel automobiles from the 1940s and 1950s.  I am attracted to reflections in the paint and the chrome bumpers.  In oil paintings, I like to create a contrast between old and new age to make the audience think back.  I attempt to help make sure people don’t forget the beauty in the classic times.

            My work is a means to remember, a memory of something lost.  I have done  a piece, using broken and reassembled coffee mugs covered in ground coffee, symbolic of a trip to El Salvador and the broken lives left after the Salvadoran Civil War.  I like to paint cars whose beauty has been forgotten.  The car and creativity to make a car has long since been forgotten.  Instead of making cars out of steel, they are being produced with thin metals and fiberglass.  I like to keep these cars alive in my work.  I paint them with bright colored oil paint, lathering it on thick

            In my graphite figure drawings, there is an almost metallic quality to their skin.  It is smooth, but shiny and metallic.  I also go about my drawings in a mechanical way, plotting everything out before I actually go about doing the work.

            I also believe that I am constantly growing.  My art will change as life goes on.  I expect and will embrace new opportunities as they come.  I will not limit myself to one way of doing my art, nor will I limit myself to one subject matter.