Retracing our steps is a ritual for finding something lost. How often, upon overturning piles of laundry or upending stacks of books, do we find not what was misplaced but rather an article long forgotten or a secret unannounced? How frequently does the absence of what we expect to find divert us from our mission, and provide us with an itinerary into the overlooked present, insight into the future, or destabilize the past?

My paintings and drawings are invested in absence; their content depends largely upon what is not immediately present. Composed solely of elements pertinent to the narrative, the images are devoid of much of the surroundings that nature would have us expect. The people, animals and objects, removed from their conventional settings, appear on barren grounds or in turbulent climates. Displaced from their ordinary surroundings, the subjects take on new roles within the narrative. Their isolation solicits our attention, and they behave according to the omissions.

Many of my images contain unoccupied objects that do not fulfill their conventional function; rather, their functionality pertains to precisely what is not there. What are the circumstances of the missing? What possibilities surround the absence? How does the vacancy inform what presides? The elimination of conventional associations asks us to draw new conclusions, and consider alternate outcomes to commonplace events. As we look deep into the empty spaces we brush up against what surrounds them, and become awakened to the meaning that absence suggests.

2004