In mixed media paintings I incorporate photos from travels in the United States, Southern Africa, India, Turkey, and Tibet into fields of abstract painting, often in a hanging scroll format. My digital images, depicting similar elements in different combinations, are entirely composed on the computer. I approach my digital work as a painter does: I build up, section by section, segments of photos taken from different sources, adjusting each part in relationship to the rest.

Recent digital works are fictional places using elements from my travel photos; on these I layer sections of the corresponding page in my passport and/or related maps. Thus the tension between an image that looks like it could be real, while including deliberate discrepancies, represents the memory of an experience, creating an uncertainty about any absolute understanding of our world.

In all these works I address issues related to how people construct meaning and a sense of identity for themselves withing the context of a diverse world. In particular, my travels and sojourns in diverse places stimulated an examination of how the visitor, the setting, and/or the people are affected by their mutual encounter. As such, I also explore the idea that all memories are constructed from both the "real" and the invented.

Biography

In addition to being an artist, I am an art critic, contributing to Art in America, Sculpture, Flash Art, ArtPapers, and other publications. I have curated exhibits for such institutions as The Spertus Museum, The State of Illinois Museums, Wood Street Gallery, U-Turn E-zine, and the Ukrainian Insittute of Modern Art. I have lectured at various institutions and universities in the U.S., Europe, South Africa, and Indonesia.

Representation

Chicago: Flatfile Galleries (digital work), Perimeter Gallery (paintings); San Francisco: Toomey-Tourell Gallery; New York, A.I.R. Gallery; Internationally, galleries in Belgium, Poland, South Africa, The Netherlands, and Indonesia.

Recent Exhibitions

Invented Travelogues, Flatfile Galleries, Chicago Il. 2007,
Paintings, The Bag Factory, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2006
Invented Travelogues, Gordart Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2006
Spatial Meditations, Soscielak Gallery, Breslau, Poland, 2005
Meditations on Ruin, Flatfile Galleries, Chicago Il 2004