Artist Statement
I had an alter-ego named “David” when I was a kid. He was “my father’s son,” a character based on the son my parents were expecting to have instead of me. My sense of him developed in their “could have, if . . .” statements, as in: “You could be a physicist if . . .”

David started showing up in my work last year. My alter-ego allowed me to make tropes of father’s interests: Bruce Lee, poker and horses. The painting “Secretariat,” for example, —though eventually ‘resolved’ into a web of blue lines and a cluster of costume jewels— began with a pair of found photographs of the legendary racehorse, who I would have found infinitely interesting, if, like “David,” I had ever been drawn to understand handicaps and bet on a race.

I had entered an expansive space of taste and memory. Subjective elements became stand-ins for still other alter-egos and accumulated within my paintings in a succession of interruptions. In stilted conversation, the elements compete for beauty, recognition and autonomy. Spray paint enjoys one formal identity, while oil paint struggles with another formal identity, just as linoleum tiles and movie posters contain their own set of associations and affect. The materials are layered or aligned and brought into tension, left competing in this space of staggered interruption where the final work is characterized by a suspension of wholeness: part of the surface is built up into a muddy grey opacity while other parts lay bare.

This suspension of wholeness is itself a reflection of the kinds of conversations being staged in my head: conversations in which identities are contested, arguments are formulated and then ignored, or absorbed in ways that could never be anticipated. “David,” the original alter-ego that I constructed as a foil for father’s taste, has fragmented. A growing group of characters is emerging along side a growing group of actions: an irreverent graphic designer, a Duchampian physicist, a 30-year-old 1970’s housewife, a decision to cut, to remove, an act adding line, and of choosing color or image. These identities are interdependent, so it is their common fate to remain unresolved.