My work has always addressed the universal issues of illness and the recovery/transformation of human beings and of our environment.
Early in my artistic career my primary medium was painting and the subjects were personal. My early worked addressed my own chronic illness as a child which resulted in a renal transplant.
My most recent work has been focused in the arena of public art. I use large-scale prints and installations to create awareness of urban blight and environmental damage. My work also addresses the potential for recovery and transformation.
Another theme in my work is creating awareness about the environment, so most of my work is made out of recycled material.
Throughout the many years that I have lived in Philadelphia, I have been documenting the health and welfare of the Schuylkill River in my series The Schuylkill River Project. Originally inspired by artists such as Thomas Eakins and Thomas Moran, I created oil paintings depicting the river within the limits of Philadelphia.
For the past few years I have been focusing on combining photography, painting, and computer manipulation of my documentation of the river, in its beauty and sickness. Most recently I have been using Photoshop to alter a specific photograph by layering many images together, including abstracted photos of my own skin cancers as a source of texture in certain areas. The next step in this process is to create installations that include images that are able to invoke the physicality of the Schuylkill River: bridges, fences and the surface of the water itself.
My work will always address recovery and transformation.
Strawberry Mansion Bridge, digitally manipulated photography, 18″ x 24″, $300
