SERIES STATEMENT

My latest work I’m calling the Family Mysteries series. In this series I have begun mining over 1500 digitized family photographs dating as far back as the 1890s. For now, my working process is playing in Photoshop to get interestingly layered visual images, then translating them into oil paintings. As in my last two previous series, some works combine large digital and paper collages painted with oil and the ancient media of encaustic (painting with hot wax). Other works are dominated by oil in a photo-realistic painting style. As to meaning, so far I am having fun with unfixed metaphors for the viewer to hopefully enjoy. Color and texture contribute as much to content as does image identification and title.

I am still combining the ancient painting media of encaustic (pigment mixed with beeswax) with cutting-edge digital collage, learning to archivally incorporate digitally printed images as a base and a kind of template from which to begin spontaneous interplay of mixed painting and drawing media. Integration is the challenge and goal of the actual painting process.