My current series of photo-based work originates from photographs I have taken on city streets in New York and at Grand Central Station. I am expanding and shifting the parameters of traditional photography by combining it with digital technology, oil painting, and occasional text.  By blending the distinctions between these areas, it enables me to push beyond their conventional boundaries to create a new format.  I print my photos in black and white and build up the color by hand painting many layers of oil glazes.

Being born and raised in Chicago, my work is informed by city life and the multitude of issues we encounter living in a large city: loneliness and alienation in our fast-paced society, the concept of personal identity and the loss of it, the individual as part of the crowd, and finding ourselves somewhere in the process. My work embraces the contemporary non-linear view of time with its randomness, spontaneity, and chance occurrences.

Around 2000 I began writing text over some of the figures in my photos in an attempt to personalize or individualize them, and make them stand out from the crowd.  These brief stories are from my imagination, based solely on the individual’s appearance or stance.

I superimpose these ”biographies” onto the characters, almost as if they are wearing their stories like an article of clothing.  I try to give a little bit of history about the person; where they are from, their age, what they do, their hopes, their dreams, and often something embarrassing or personal that they would rather not have revealed.  By using text in my work, the viewer can focus on “experiencing” the artwork, and become a part of the process by reading it, rather than simply looking at a picture from a distance.

For the past ten years I have taken photos at Grand Central Station, which is elementally symbolic of a place where lives meet, cross, and move on through time. The location itself has been the point of arrival and departure for generations, and is a metaphor for our voyage through life. The figures are often in movement, conveying our individual journeys, where we are "collectively alone".

Surveillance now occurs as a routine part of our daily lives.  In this series I am using both downloaded photos from public Internet Webcams in different parts of the world, and images from airport x-ray screening machines as the sources for my photo-based oil paintings and suitcase installation. 

I see surveillance simply as a fact of our current times, and in viewing these public Webcams on the Internet, I realized that surveillance cameras have taken on another unexpected purpose. They have become the historians of our contemporary era. They capture us in our everyday lives, going about our business, usually unaware that we are being observed. Never before in history have we been so documented.  I have found it fascinating to utilize these images within a fine art context, regardless of what their political implications might be.

Occasionally a person does see the Webcam mounted on a building, and waves or holds up a sign in a vain effort to connect with somebody out in the world. This brings up underlying issues of loneliness and alienation in our society, where we are "collectively alone”. Often our only interaction is through the Internet, rather than face to face.  At any time of the day or night, we can watch and capture images of people anywhere in the world.  We can be “somewhere” without leaving the comfort of our own living room. This creates an undeniable feeling of voyeurism, which in its own way helps to establish a kind of anonymous connection with the rest of humanity.

The other part of this series involves images that I photographed off of airport screening machines that show the contents of suitcases, much like seeing an x-ray of our bodies. The usual paraphernalia, shoes, umbrellas, and eyeglasses can be seen, but I decided to “enhance” these images with the addition of more ominous items, such as guns, bombs, firecrackers, scissors, and liquid filled bottles. This was done partly tongue-in-cheek, but also because these items directly relate to our present day fears of what we imagine might be lurking in someone’s bags.  In the past we never gave much thought to our carry-on luggage, but things have changed whether we want to admit it or not.

This series of photo-based works are from photographs I have been taking of people on rides at amusement parks, carnivals and county fairs.  By blurring the distinctions between photography, digital manipulation, and oil painting, a synthesis is created, and the work becomes multi-layered in both meaning and appearance. 

The images are printed in black & white with numerous layers of oil glazes hand painted on for color. I am combining the old master technique of oil glazing with contemporary photo/digital technology. 

The rides in these works represent flying, and may at first glance appear to be a nostalgic view of simpler times, perhaps a childhood past, that we often think of when we refer to “the good old days”.  But, more lies beneath the surface. In some of the pieces, the figures’ feet often do not touch the ground but are “up in the air”, which relates to the state of mind of feeling ungrounded or unconnected in the world.

The movement of the rides, some a circular swirl of blurred figures, some up and down, while others, a more tranquil journey through space, are like our own personal journeys in life. Sometimes turbulent or exciting, while other times peaceful and calm, but always in a state of motion.