Whimsy and Weight - Where the pieces are sometimes serious, sometimes silly - but always colorful. My art spans both of these extremes, from cartoonish light pieces of Whimsy and more emotionally resonant pieces of Weight.
Whimsy
Cartoons and illustrations have been formative in the development of my art style. I draw inspiration from everyday things, both in my serious pieces and my not-so-serious pieces. While I enjoy the deep connection to personal stories in some of my emotionally charged series, I often enjoy getting back to my more cartoony, stylized roots. Most of the time, that means my inspiration comes from a different personal joy, my spouse, Chris, and my pet rabbit, Rake. This has resulted in “Snack Bunnies” - silly bunnies as silly foodstuffs which started as (and continues to be) a joke among two silly people.
Weight
Both in my work in medical product design and as a self-taught artist, I am motivated by deeply probing challenges and adversity affecting those around me people. In my day job, I tease out solutions to hard problems facing doctors and patients. In my art, I tease out beauty from broken, ugly, or frightening things. With both, I admire and celebrate the resilience of people impacted by adversity, such as mental and physical disorders. My series, "Fleuroma", is an exploration of the impact of cancer on its hosts. Each piece honors a close family member or friend who has been indelibly marked by their battle, their tumors rendered as impasto flowers. My other series, "Kintsugi", is a triptych showing the progression from feeling broken and lost in the face of anxiety and betrayal to reformation and transformation as shown through the use of gilded accents as in the Japanese art of Kintsugi
