Artist Statement

I began the graduate program by painting self-portraits of restrained size that skim across psychological themes of forfeit, fetish, and sexual dynamics. They were modest beginnings to expose and consider the personal reasons behind my masculine inferiority crisis. Continuing an inspection of sadomacochistic scenarios, I plumb deeper into the sexually transgressive, boldly confronting realization of exaggerated, extreme, and generally explicit fantasy. Some anxieties grow proportionally with larger pieces, endowing a proportional length of time to contemplate compositional balance of form and action. Particularly, it is important for me to appropriately manifest power and pleasure in the female bodies, in relation to mine, within a feminist discourse. All participants are willingly and consensually involved in each exposition. At times, I am figuratively “losing” or “in over” my head during these rituals: alluding to an internal struggle against inhibition into exploration of the subversive. In other moments, the sensual exchange is on more apparently equal footing.

Either way, the tension of invitation and provocation between figures (and spectators) intermingles and impregnates my paper. Partnered with natural seminal and fluid qualities of the watercolor medium, the gestation of my later works and their emotional provinces is bred from curiosity in unfamiliar and uncommon sexual practices. Those categories may be more popular than I am aware, but personally seem unusual at the onset of my playful investigation. Through the process of painting theses themes, I am interested in experiencing and understanding an emotional connection through sexual simulation. While obsessively and compulsively making small details, I hope the displayed control of this particular medium also pushes its conventional artistic boundaries and expectations to the public. Overall, my production embraces artistic and personal risks into figurative entanglement of classic models. Unusual and eccentric events are normalized, or at least seemingly less illegitimate. They are consummated within intimate moments swaying between precision and whimsy of sentiment and rendition. Ultimately, they penetrate into the commiseration and celebration of sexuality through performative research and exhibition.

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