Process

Nearly all of my pieces are mixed media in some sense. I begin each piece using traditional materials, including oil and acrylic paint, pastels, ink, charcoal, and encaustic wax. As I continue, I sometimes make use of other materials, including photographs, wine foils, antique nameplates, newspaper clippings, brads, and ephemera. As I layer in words, names, issues, and faces, the piece begins to drive an internal conversation. Other times, I use paints and encaustic wax exclusively, manipulating the materials to create landscapes or abstracts using brushes and heat.

Much of my work explores the marriage of language and art—a fixation that may well be a product of my early editing career, as well as my love of literature, poetry, history, and the New York Times. Other pieces are more political in nature, focusing on a moment of political importance or a political issue that I feel inspired to address in my work. Still others are entirely abstract, beginning from a single photograph or memory and growing into abstraction from there. For all of these pieces, my process is solitary and contemplative. Ideas develop over weeks and months, and often spring from searching flea markets, antique shops, and used bookstores in the US and abroad.