I draw. Drawing is a tool of existential questioning into ideas and values, into history and culture, into how human will and feeling manifest within a narrative arc. It is a search for the sociobiological stories embedded in the body’s thrust and gesture. My drawings are characterized by scrupulous effort, continuous study, and exploration of tangents that bring hidden information to light.
In this series, I cast veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pose as the different characters in Michelangelo’s masterpiece, The Last Judgment. Dressed in their uniforms, they enact the many roles of savior, saints, martyrs, prophets, demons and damned. New versions of The Last Judgment have followed, each exploring a tangent only suggested by that first expression. Every successive piece calls for me to experiment with different materials. The intimacy of hair and tears, the fierce focus of marker contours, the preciousness of gold leaf on handmade paper, or the elegiac quality of ashes and frankincense–each material lent its own qualities of transparency or obscurity to the subject.