about
art practice
My work has always been about relational rupture. Themes of trauma, heartbreak, aloneness, betrayal, confusion, and lack of belonging are depicted.
This emotionality is represented using the “private language” of art. It has seemed taboo to address this subject matter directly using figuration until recently.
There are unspoken rules about who gets to speak what kinds of truth in what space and what content is acceptable in what forms of art in certain contexts. Talking about trauma is one of these topics.
Art’s formal language can obfuscate and make palatable the difficult truths that are sometimes unbearable to tell.
art education
The rhetoric of art theory and criticism has long prided the left brain. Art (and trauma), however, reside on the right. Art’s ineffable qualities are its phenomenological power, cosmological meaning, and the language of human understanding.
Art is a way of knowing and a process of research, marking time, and of creating understanding and connection between human beings and the world we live in.
The interior world of artists bring rich, deep experiences into existence. These aletheia are their own ontologies and teleologies, which demands witnessing. This is our purpose in the dialogic nature of heutagogy.
I have taught people from age 4 to 80. I’ve been a professor of art and design at several Los Angeles colleges and most recently at the Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia.
art therapy
One of the most important influences on my work has been learning firsthand about the transformational metaphysical work done with art.
Art Therapy provides people a rare opportunity to dictate pre- (or post-) verbal experiences –which can include tapping deep into what it means to suffer and to be alive.
Altered states of consciousness are achieved through the artmaking endeavor. Neuroaesthetics can teach us about ourselves, our world, our future, and can change us.
Art[making] is both a means and an end. It changes our brain and makes people happier, more productive, and more fulfilled. I believe in this process fully and seek to share it with others through my practice.
In addition to being an artist & educator, I am a credentialed Art Therapist and a PhD candidate at Dominican University of California.