ARTIST STATEMENT

The central theme of my work is the still life. It has always been about the relationship between the object or subject and me. From the time of learning, to the time of exploring, to the time of a defined line of work, the constant was the still subject. This continues whether I was dealing with Identity, migration, or the human condition. It was all done through the still life.

Still life has always been considered a minor genre, the stepchild of high art, despite its great tradition and such practitioners as Caravaggio, Chardin, and Cezanne. But what really is the difference between a still life and portrait? The subject, that’s all. Yet fruits on a table are dismissed for their lack of heroism. We revere the human, but not the earth. The fruit on the table is there for us, not us for them. This is the genesis of the work, and so I embark in the study of the disclaimed, the marginalized. To search in the opposite direction, against the current, one also ends up analyzing human beliefs and their implications. Our perception of nature manifests in our behavior; it resounds in our actions. And so I enter this natural world to observe this life form that lives in still—nature’s trees, fruits and flowers all in their static, statuesque, wise existence.