ABOUT
Factual events that actually occurred remain an intoxicating source of image-making for me. To my mind the convention of empiricism in art is long and varied. Naming just a few artists whose works benefit from the action of looking out into the world in collaboration with media-sourced imagery: On Kawara, Leon Golub, Martha Rosler, Richard Artschwager, Adrian Piper, Marlene Dumas, Luc Tuymans, Raymond Pettibon and not the least, Manet. The art may come out the other side with attitudes hot, cold or indifferent, but always there is always an acknowledgement of where the images came from as well as how they were assimilated into their own wider perspective.
I take an organic approach to image editing by remaining in the here and now, mind always open to what is going on. It is necessary to have a broad enough investigative procedure to be able to incorporate photos that exist in a media that constantly churns out what we generally think of as news. From the selection forward an image must oblige me with a bit of a transformation as it comes into a new existence within my own invented style that seeks to convert them to a more idiosyncratic conclusion.
Reliant as they are on media-sourced photojournalism my images do involve already built-in interpretations. One by the journalist when their photograph was published and another by the viewer at the time it was seen. More or less ignoring both perspectives my process plucks up a single image and proposes a marriage. Each image has probably come one to the other with very different viewer appeals. Each is rife with its own separately construed significance. By joining them ipso facto, they are allowed to take on new and unexpected significance as they together pass into their altered historical perspective.
The painting medium(s) are an important element of the work. Wood structures are prepared with gesso in many coats to develop a textural base upon which the image will progress. Neocolor is worked into the textured surface to create the image. When it's completely finished several coats of encaustic are layered over all. Each layer adds a different level of complexity so that the final surface has a composite look of painterliness despite the actual thinness of the surfaces's physical depth.