My work explores visual and conceptual correspondences between the human body and universal forms. Within this current series of large-scale drawings, I have chosen specific features that embody our human identity, vulnerability and mortality to speak to the associations of fleeting and enduring time. Through scale, texture, light and the drawing process, the body is transformed into imposing and majestic landscapes that transcend its earthly connection to take on a cosmic perspective. Skin texture, wrinkles and marks become signifiers of the porosity of the body and its relationship to the world, while various readings of orifice and scar reference bodily forms in a provocative manner.

The images are carefully rendered in a hyper-realistic/photographic mode and composed to create an ambiguity between representation and abstraction that simultaneously suggests an otherworldly presence with that of the familiar. They combine the fragility of the charcoal, the sense of touch, and the suggestion of paper as skin to examine the relationships between the physical and the ethereal, the personal and the transpersonal, the infinite and the intimate.

born: 1963, New Haven, CT

education

University of North Carolina, MFA, 2000
University of Connecticut, BFA, 1985

selected awards/honors

New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant, Drawing, New York, NY, 2005.
Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship Grant, Drawing/Works on Paper, 2005.
Best of Show Award,Ceres Sixth National Juried Exhibition, Ceres Gallery, New York, NY, 2004.
First Place Award, New Directions ‚02, National Juried Exhibition, Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, 2002.

selected publications

Contemporary American Realism, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Fort Wayne, IL. 2008. Catalog essay by Donald Kuspit.
Drawing Essentials, Deborah Rockman, Oxford University Press, 2007. Featured Contemporary Artist.
Drawing Papers 55, The Drawing Center's Publication Series, 2005. Catalog essay by Carol Mavor.

selected solo or two-person exhibits

John and June Allcott Gallery, University of North Carolina: Landmarks, Chapel Hill, NC 2007. (solo)
Chapman Cultural Center, Cazenovia College: Intimate/Infinite, Cazenovia, NY, 2003. (solo)

selected group shows

SUF Art Gallery: Drawing the Other: Works on Paper,  Florence, Italy 2009.
Fort Wayne Museum of Art:  2008 Biennial: Contemporary American Realism, Fort Wayne IN, 2008.  
The Drawing Center: LineAge: Selections Fall 2005,  New York, NY, 2005.
Ceres Gallery: Ceres Sixth National Juried Exhibition, New York, NY, 2004.