ARTIST STATEMENT

I see my work as a confrontation with pure presence. I am interested in how the current manifestation of an object or person is a fully realized expression of the now. So I am not concerned with stories or symbols. When I see a found object, it is, of course, filled with the history of where it has been and what it has been through, but what impresses me about it, is the way it has arrived in the present moment informed by its past but not essentially tied to it. The same is true of my photographs; whether of people or objects or scenes, my images are more concerned with the pure shining of the present moment than the stories they may contain.

When I place my portraits within a found object construction they combine to create for me and for the viewer, if they are willing to suspend interpretation, an opportunity to come into the fullness of the pure present. It is only in these moments that we may have the opportunity to be truly surprised, to have a moment where our breath may be the only sound heard, before we start thinking or analyzing, a moment before the search for symbols begins, when thought stops and we hang suspended in the ripe space of possibility where true creativity and freedom lie.