Everything in service of the idea. This is my mantra. Obligate ram ventilator is a term normally associated with certain sharks and refers to their need to stay in motion, pushing oxygen-rich seawater through their gills to avoid asphyxiation. This is an apt analogy when characterizing my current methodology: process ideas quickly, express them succinctly, and keep moving forward. It’s how I stay energized. It’s how I stay endorphinated.

Like most artists, I find locality and work experience fertile ground for providing new tools, perspectives, and resources. For example, some years ago, as an ironworker, I learned to read structural drawings and eventually used this skill to create my own business producing architectural drawings and 3-D computer models. Soon I realized that, in the architectural world, color is used almost exclusively in the design phase of projects, and rarely in construction drawings. In turn, I now take this same approach to my art, standing the traditional model on its head. I currently work in black and white. The aim is to incorporate constraints and pare down actions to the essentials. Ideas must stand on their own — or fail. The results more graphic and immediate. Viewers to easily engage and bring more to the process.

My current project, When Theories are Weak, is a compilation of images (ink and brush drawings, acrylic paintings, relief prints, and waterjet-cut wall sculptures) exploring the outer boundaries of instant image recognition and image collapse. This frequently calls for the use of the same subject matter, presented from contrasting perspectives or different points in time to underline my intent. Each image stands alone, and yet this exploration often begs for diptychs, triptychs, sequencing, and inter-media juxtaposition to further magnify and more roundly define imaginal relationships. This image-media interchangeability leads to some interesting exhibition possibilities.

Other Grey Areas is an overlapping project I am now initiating. It is the logical extension of WTAW, with the addition of an elemental examination of casted shadows on the faces of objects and ground planes. The intention is to find and demonstrate balanced triads of line, form, and shadow, while continuing to define and refine my growing pictorial lexicon.