I apply the paint on the canvas with the brush employing lines as well as large alla prima brushstrokes. I often start with thinned out paint, peinture a l'essence, and I work my way to a well loaded brush. A key component of my practice is to take the subject out of context which alters the meaning of the story represented. For example I may take an image, sometimes a well known image or a gesture, imaginary or appropriated, by changing the surrounding or by altering the image somewhat I give it new a meaning.
For example in the drawing by Raphael "The fighting nudes" there is clear violence in the work but if the figure perpetuating this violence with raised arms and clenched fists over a stick is isolated, he appears to be instead the subject of an anatomical study of a golf swing. Golfers would quickly point out that the arms may be in the wrong position but nevertheless, golf comes to mind first and then "wait a minute..." the viewer begins to take a better look, and the dialog between artwork and viewer has been initiated.
In today's fast pace world with endless advertisements on television, the internet, magazines and other publications with emphasis on superficial appearance and pressure to project an endless sense of success, what would Botticelli's Venus do? Would she feel satisfied and confident as she walks on Park Avenue or would she feel that she must improve her figure or change her looks by visiting the plastic surgeon? Would she insist that her doctor prescribe her mood altering drugs as suggested by the pharmaceutical industry’s advertisements? If we do not feel chipper there is a drug for that, if our children are not measuring up in school, there is a pill for that, if we are not comfortable with our bodies, there is remedy for that... In my painting "Venus: 'Am I pretty yet?'" I visit that notion, Venus is in the midst of alterations by her favorite surgeon; despite her bandages, dislocated features we can still see Botticelli’s Venus, perhaps it is the gesture, the abundant yellowish hair the tilt of the head; does she feel up the par?
I use visual similes to engage the viewer in a conversation with the work. With joyous brushstrokes and fun intent I alter the context and meaning of the original story and in doing so, I invite the viewer to reconsider their assumptions and expectations.
