I was born in Detroit when cars had fins like fish and I now collage, paint, print, work and study in the Jingletown neighborhood of Oakland in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Growing up in America I have seen the bizarre myth of our culture close up, behind the mask, and have tried to embody some of its contradictions, ambiguities and ambivalences in art.

Believing art can partly redeem a violence-loving, materialistic and imperialistic society I continue investigating several art forms, including collage on canvas, and abstract flowing liquid paint combined with carefully hand-painted images mined from America's forgotten working class artistic history. I believe any serious artist needs to have a class analysis in their work as well as their other social and artistic interests.

What is rare about my work is that it has developed an aesthetic embodying solidarity with - and also analysis of - my working class upbringing and the prejudice of American culture against this same working class (and apparently every other living thing). I am extremely interested in dramatizing the distinction between the art produced by this class and more rarefied art. In this way I explore American cultures true genius for commercial art in order to inform and strengthen high art, and to simultaneously use art to comment on our commercial preoccupations.

I love art, its promise and its history, I study it very seriously and I enjoy imagining it is 500 years in the future when most of this era will have been consigned to landfill and a true audience will emerge to be able to more clearly see what remains of this work, since I am unable to be reconciled to making art for the contemporary crowd.

It is this hope for a better (aesthetic and spiritual) future than what exists now that draws me on. In this work I often evoke imagery created by nature itself combined alongside deeply felt references to some of the most well-designed images ever produced in America to gain precious insight into both - nature and culture.

Artist Highlights

• ArtWanted.com Gallery:    Art/Drawing Misc.
• Past Clients:    God. The Devil. Pamela Anderson.