For years I've been trying to determine what defines two-dimensional art. My drawing practice ranges from the intimate to large-scale installations. The materials are all flat surfaces: plywood, paper, and Plexiglas, yet they often inhabit multi-dimensional spaces. My large work that can be mounted on a wall can also be mounted in the middle of the room. Although it occupies a space usually reserved for sculpture, the work is still only a flat, two-dimensional surface. A drawing on a flat piece of paper can be mounted inside a box with other materials and appear to inhabit a larger space, though it is still, in essence, a cut-out drawing on a flat surface.

Two-dimensional imagery trapped within flat, rectangular confines has a conventionality and limitation to it. Single layer imagery is also limited. A flat surface need not be resigned to rigidity, or to a singular medium or material. With experimentation, there is a lot more that can be done, though in the end, there are still no sides, curves, corners, or solid depth. There is still the initial flatness.

My latest large-scale work exploring this quandary is "Quantum Confusion", a composition that plays with the ideas of multi layer universes. The life-size, charcoal-on-birch-plywood people are confronted with sheets of 4' x 8' plexi that designate a portal into an alternate reality. Are these layers of reality like pages in a book–one thin layer overlaying another? When the installation is viewed from the side, all that can be seen are 1/4" thick edges. It looks like nothing is there. But when viewed from the front or back, it is a series of flat images without the intervention of a vertical horizon.

One of the original goals for much of western drawing and painting before the 20th century was to trick the viewer into believing what they were seeing on a flat surface had dimension. I'm trying to take that basic idea to a new level by freeing the image from its conventional trappings.

born:1956, Worcester, MA

education:

University of Massachusetts/Amherst, 1978

selected awards/honors

Purchase Award, "55th Mid-States Art Exhibition", Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN, 2010
2nd Prize Award, American Art Today, The Bascom, Highlands, NC, 2009
Purchase Award, 11th Annual Renaissance Center Regional Art Exhibition, Renaissance Center, Dickson, TN, 2009
Arts and Heritage Award, 2nd Tennessee Biennial, Clarksville Custom House Museum, Clarksville, TN, 2008

selected publications

Manifest Gallery, INPA 1,Cincinnati, Ohio, 2011
University of Tennessee Ewing Gallery,"Figurative Tradition in Contemporary Art",  Knoxville, TN, p.15-16, 2010
William King Museum, "From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands", Abingdon, VA, p. 3-4,15,  2009
Fort Wayne Museum of Art, "Contemporary American Realism", Fort Wayne Indiana, p. 101, 2008

selected solo or two-person exhibits

"Quantum Confusion" Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Tech,  Smithville, TN, 2011
"Donuts Behaving Badly and The Seven Deadly Sins", The Arts Company, Nashville, TN, 2010
"Eat Me: Anthropomorphic Food Paintings" Clayton Center for the Arts, Maryville College, Maryville, TN, 2010 "Skeletons in Closets" Tennessee Art Commission Gallery, Nashville, TN, 2008

selected group shows

"Point Time", Slocumb Gallery, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN , 2011
"Pride and Prejudice", Archetype Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2011
"55th Mid-States Art Exhibition", Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN, 2010-2011
"5 x 5 Exposed", Target Gallery, Torpedo Factory, Alexandria, VA, 2010