statement

"A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor." -English proverb

Like nature, particularly water, emotion is mutable. The most important element I work with is emotion. Emotion drives my vision. Suspending a breaking wave on paper is like trying to define happiness or grief. Each piece that I create has a story and an overriding emotion within it that develops gradually and organically. Elements reveal themselves through layers of thoughtful crafting to be tornadoes, ocean swells, earthquakes, explosions and light pillars. Maybe it's about our perceptions of control, or lack thereof, that fascinates me. I only know that I better understand the world as a planet, and my relationship to it, when I'm in the studio.

I work almost exclusively on cotton rag paper using a variety of media. Each piece begins with a drawing of scribed lines on blank paper. These lines become the geometry and compositional framework that initially define each piece. Next comes the underpainting of colored washes. I create these washes with brushes laden with various inks and dyes. The washes saturate the paper, flowing through the incised lines in tiny rivulets, enhancing them, and marrying the framework to the underpainting. Drawing is the main course. Pastels, charcoal, raw cement dye, razors, graphite and colored pencils are used in a variety of ways to draw the top layers of imagery, defining the final subject.

bio

born: 1963, Indianapolis, Indiana

education

Cleveland Institute of Art, BFA, 1987

selected awards/honors

Best of Show, 22nd National Juried Exhibition, Art Institute and Gallery, Salisbury, Maryland, 2014
Second Place and Peoples Choice Awards, New Now 13 county juried exhibition, Highland Heights, Ohio, 2014
Juror's Merit Award for Superior Body of Work, The River West Viriginia and Ohio juried exhibition, Parkersburg Art Center, Parkersburg, West Virginia, 2014
Second Place, The Great Lakes Drawing Biennial, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan, 2014

selected publications

Zymbol, international literary magazine, issue 5, 2015
Environmental Winds: Making the Global in Southwest China, Hathaway, Michael J., University of California Press. Berkley, Los Angeles, London. Cover, 2013
Studio Visit Magazine, Vol. 21, p. 28-29, 2013
Manifest International Drawing Annual 8, p. 54, 2013

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery, Turbulent Territory, Cleveland, Ohio, 2013
Mercyhurst University, Edge to Edge, Erie, Pennsylvania, 2013
Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery, Atmospheric Distortions, Cleveland, Ohio, 2011
1point618 Gallery, Black and Blue, Cleveland, Ohio, 2008

selected group shows

Cummings Gallery, Mercyhurst University, Confronting Injustice: A Woman's Voice, Erie, Pennsylvania, 2015
Southern Ohio Museum of Art, Sky High, Portsmouth, Ohio, 2014
Kenneth Paul Lesko Gallery, Cinema 5, Cleveland, Ohio, 2014
Sullivan Gallery, A Strange Holiday, Bay Village, Ohio, 2014