ARTIST STATEMENT The predominant themes and concepts I explore in my work are history, aging and the passing of time. Each of the series presented explores these themes in various ways. RELATIVITY STATEMENT This new series of digitally created portraits are an exploration of these themes applied to the realm of digital video and time based source material. With digital video clips, there are various ways a computer can compress them for size and picture quality. By exploiting certain aspects of the compression process, I have applied a technique that essentially fools the computer into moving the pixels of one video clip in the manner intended for a different, unrelated clip. This creates a new distinct and unified combination of the two wherein the properties of both clips are fused into one. By then combining individual frames from several of these altered video clips into one still image, the end result is a combination of multiple moments in time being represented simultaneously. The final pieces are archival pigment prints that are strikingly painterly in their portrayal of cubist notions of space as well as a visual representation of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and it’s unifying of space and time. LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON STATEMENT With this series, "Les Demoiselles d’Avignon", I am exploring these same themes and concepts and how they can be applied to an image in the digital realm. I began with a picture of Pablo Picasso's painting "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon”. The idea was to create a painting that was "aged" digitally. By this I do not mean attempting to create what one would imagine a painting or object to look like after it has been aged over time. Rather, I mean aging as being the application of destructive forces to an object or image over and over again. When an object is aged, it has been subjected to repetitive, minor destructive forces over an extended period of time; for example, the slow staining of a wall from drips or the rusting of a piece of metal. With a digital image, there are many "destructive" forces that can be applied to cause the image to lose information. With the first painting in the series, I shrank the image down to 1% of its size, and then blew it back up again. When this happens, the computer has to interpret what information to fill in the empty space created between pixels when it is blown back up again. In the other paintings in the series, I applied different ways of “aging” the image, causing the computer to have to make similar decisions. Applying any of these destructive actions once or even a few times does not alter the image substantially. But when applied hundreds of times, the image loses more and more information to the point where it becomes virtually unrecognizable. Applying this digitally destructive force over and over again is the digital equivalent of an object that has been subjected to the elements over many years. After the image was created in Photoshop, I painted it in oil on canvas roughly 8 feet square, the same size as the original Picasso painting. By repainting this "digitally" aged image, a strange alternate version of the painting is created. Rather than a painting that has been ripped, stained or discolored over time, the paintings are images that have been aged in the context of the digital realm. GOWANUS/METAL STATEMENT In the Gowanus and Metal series, I am exploring the process and history of the painting, both aesthetically and intellectually. The work is about external forces acting upon an object over time and inherently documenting these changes. However, they are not solely about the passing of time, but rather they are a record of the accumulation of these destructive forces. The paintings are large works in oil and sand on canvas, with textured, wall-like surfaces. They are built up over time by both constructive and destructive processes. Layers and washes of paint are added and partially removed over and over again in much the same way a wall or other surface ages over time. With the Metal series, I have been exploring this concept further by treating pieces of metal with different chemicals. The pieces are made by a repetitive process of applying these chemicals in a manner that changes the color and physical properties of the metal. Other chemicals are then applied to partially remove these effects; thereby creating a new surface that still contains traces of previous states. Having previously created paintings that have the appearance of being aged, led to the exploration of different ways of creating work that does not just have the look of aging, but rather is actually physically changed. While visually beautiful, the work also clearly demonstrates the conceptual effects of history and the passage of time. It is important that these paintings and works on metal have been made by repeatedly applying constructive and destructive forces over and over again, making them both something that exists in its present state while still bearing reminders of its past.

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