My artistic practice is grounded in painting and drawing. It is the search for a painting within itself. Through a variety of materials, I mine the core of my encounter within the creative process. I experiment with various mediums such as oil, ink, and shellac. With the sum of my marking-making and chance occurrence I strive for the resonance of the swelling of an ocean tide. The fluidity of ink acts in response to my gestural mark-making. This work, "Mist and Bones", leans into the exploration of the abstracted skull suggestive of Memento Mori. Rather than being simply macabre I use the skull as remembrance and a symbol of hopefulness in an effort to live this life to the fullest, highest spiritual self we can attain.

Memento Mori

I visited Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccni, a Capuchin Crypt, in Rome, Italy. There I found a series of chapels constructed with monk’s bones containing a prayerful meditation with an ancient inscription:

“Quello che voi siete noi eravamo, quello che noi siamo voi sarete’’

(What you are now, we once were, what we are now, you will become)

Memento mori has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the prospect of the afterlife.