About the Work
All my work is figurative and what I do with the figure I call drawing, even when I use paint. There is a way that line has of demonstrating both passion and respect for the way things are, or at least the way they look, that I just can't do without. It is this passionate appreciation of the body demonstrated through the carressing, knowing line that distinguishes drawing from the most talented photography.
In drawing, there is the initial take, that "catching" of the pose, the life; the highwire act of the quick initial response. It is a lovely stage and I am often tempted to stop at that point to preserve that moment. But usually an equally strong impulse kicks in: What do I want to make of this, what I have put on paper? And out of my original response to the model I begin to fashion a brand new creature. And the new creature, if things work out, is an even deeper celebration of the body we all share as the condition of our existence.
The human body seems to me to be the most difficult subject matter, because the most fundamental, meaningful subject matter. Landscape is the world we live in. Bodyscape is, even more intimately, the world we live in; not just the world we see around us, but the world we are. Drawing from the figure expresses not just how things—a tree, the sky, the water—look, but how it feels and what it means to have the life of the body. To be embodied.