Artist Statement

I am a multimedia artist, experimenting and creating a series of works in drawing and printmaking until recently, when I shifted to oil painting as a primary medium. The plasticity of oil paint and pastels is essential to creating the work that defines my current practice. The ever-changing landscapes of South Florida have recently become the subject matter of my work in painting. Oil paint allows for the constant redefinition of composition and space, just as driving through South Florida has taught me about adaptation and modification with its ever-changing landscape. Observing and memorizing has been an arduous exercise as the swift drive-through scenes become snapshots I later paint from memory. I am particularly interested in the concrete structures of bridges and separators and the construction machinery that populates any area and its surrounding landscape. They speak of the constant modernization and development that is going on in urban and suburban areas, often at the expense of devastation, obliterating natural spaces. Sadly, this has proven to be a not-so-gradual process, and it has become somehow permanent – there is always construction work somewhere, which augurs an ongoing change that gets recorded in my work. Through the Krome Avenue series, I have discovered a genuine interest in describing the transformation these urban areas undergo, albeit the splendor of color and light that nature displays as a complement and a relief to the grief of losing nature to artificial structures. My brushstrokes define somewhat tragic events, and I believe I can redeem some of that damage by representing and interpreting a parallel, creative universe that contrasts the real one.