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<b>“Lamentations in White and Red”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel</p><p>24” x 39”, 2009</p><p><i>I don't plan my works out in any great detail. I find it more fun to wait until something strikes and I find a way to drop everything else I'm doing and I just let the work take on a life of its own; I am merely the enabler. In “Lamentations” I started with the figure slumped against a wall, despairing and defeated. It's a powerful emotion that is evoked here, something we all feel from time to time. The crude, painted-on characters inside the circle mean “condemned”. Yet I have a hopeful interpretation; she is merely gathering up her deepest resources and will pick herself off the ground, and the red and white background (Kōhaku) is an indication of that inner strength not yet unleashed. I just knew that I had to split the work into red and white fields and place the figure in the red half, without questioning why.</i></p>

<b>“Events Beyond My Control”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel</p><p>39” x 24”, 2009</p><p><i>I have always wanted to try out an allusion to infinite recursions, that effect you get when one stands between two opposing mirrors, and I was able to accomplish that in a way with the model and her black t-shirt. I used dozens of richly detailed layers of images to get to the point where the various elements worked well with one another and yet could be safely ignored, individually. Working without an endgame in mind I reached a final image that really ought to be very “now” in appearance but nevertheless has a retro feel to it, almost like an Asian movie poster of the 60's or a propaganda piece of that same era. The massive amount of detail draws the eye back and forth for quite a while, and in the full-scale work you can zoom in almost infinitely and still see something new at every level.</i></p>

<b>“Akihabara Girl”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>24.5” x 52”, 2009 </p><p><i>This work was inspired by the vibrancy and sheer energy of this well-known electronics district in Tokyo. This is the other work with my daughter as a model, and I combined her image with symbols culled from all over Tokyo, including street graffiti, subway signage, anime and manga. The immense concentration of shape, form and color sometimes brings to mind the manic drips and slashes of Jackson Pollock, but it’s done with data, not drops. Perhaps they are not that much different. As Pollock did not concern himself with the size and position of each drop that fell onto the canvas, neither did I focus on every fragment of information that fell onto the image, and both only saw the overall effect as it occurred, trusting that the details would sort themselves out naturally with the minimum of intervention and determinism.</i></p>

<b>“Kuro”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>28” x 38”, 2009 </p><p><i>The title is Japanese for “black”, and the title actually came before the work. I intended it to be a dark, brooding piece, but it eventually came to be filled with bright visual elements instead, for some unfathomable reason; a color chart, a map of the Tokyo subway system, calligraphy painted on a floor, a computer-generated torus, the riot of colors reminding me somewhat of a Kandinsky painting, or several orchestra playing at the same time. Sometimes a work can be lead by the nose in the direction you want it to go, and sometimes it leads you.</i></p>

<b>“Don’t Fall Down”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>22.5” x 44”, 2009 </p><p><i>I came across a set of dishes that just had a line of colored dots marching across, and I wanted to try that out in my own work. With my fascination for Asian icons, street art, calligraphy and diagrams of technology I decided to again meld the disparate elements together into what is really an abstract composition that uses images from real life, which is what a lot of my work really does. The circles provide the appropriate visual relief and order. The work is not considered finished some of the circles may eventually end up in iridescent gold and silver.</i></p>

<b>“Listen”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>24” x 39”, 2009 </p><p><i>“Listen” is one of my few forays into steam punk imagery; with the use of old machine parts and a Victrola horn that I placed alongside flowers of the same shape. I had a shot of the model, Julienne, wearing earphones and the work was completed by that.</i></p>

<b>“Lacrima”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>44” x 35.5”, 2009 </p><p><i>Lacrima is Latin for “tears” and this work is partly a result of my wondering about whether an artificial intelligence could acquire emotions if it reached the appropriate level of complexity. I guess we will always wonder when we will see the humanity in that which we create, and what will they think of us, when that happens?</i></p>

<b>“Quantum Rain Sideways Falls”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>28” x 44”, 2009 </p><p><i>This is an extremely dense layering of visual elements, numbering in the thousands of objects. There are maps, thick arrays of Kanji, railway signs, photos of Asian street scenes, random images of urban decay and icons of high-technology. At the top-most layer is a motion-capture sequence of marching robots, as if put there to impose order out of the chaos. The focal point is the female, who may or may not be real; soft flesh or hard plastic? Is the flower on her hair a digital simulation of a flower, or a real flower in digital form? I noticed the strong horizontal lines rushing through the piece and recalled the counter-intuitive behavior of sub-atomic particles. I thought that quantum rain would have no trouble falling in whatever direction it chose, just because it could, and thus the reason for the title.</i></p>

<b>“Plane of the Ecliptic”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>44” x 28”, 2009 </p><p><i>“Plane of the Ecliptic”, like many of my works, is a random conglomeration of unconnected visual elements thrown together with no prior planning or intent. Yet it amazes me how, in the act of viewing, the mind supplies a story, weaves a drama. In my own imagination a tourist has accidentally entered a hidden temple chamber and has discovered an ancient machine, perhaps a universal orrery or a device able to twist space and time. For certain many interpretations are possible, artifacts of our brain’s constant effort to make sense out of the randomness of the Universe.</i></p>

<b>“Unspoken”</b><p>Acrylic Resin and Mixed Materials on Canvas and Panel,</p><p>32” x 32”, 2009 </p><p><i>“Unspoken” refers to the many indignities and humiliations we all quietly suffer at one point or another. The brush strokes seem to strike the woman’s back and head like a whip yet, she sits proud and unbowed. Visually, this is one of my favorite pieces. Nothing in it actually has something to do with another; a turn of the century photograph, sweeping brushstrokes, pulsing fields of data, diagrams of radio circuitry, schematics for high-performance engines, a triple spiral that folds in on itself in space. Yet it all comes together beautifully to me and the effect is almost like that of an old painting, with the intricate golden patterns in the background as soft whispers of Gustav Klimt's “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”.</i></p>