I was born in New York City in 1979. I grew up in various places along the East Coast. I’ve been making art my whole life; I studied painting at Pratt Institute, where I earned a BFA in 2004. I live in New England with my wife and children. I work as an illustrator and graphic artist in addition to making fine art paintings. I currently sell some of my art through Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown, MA.
My fine art pieces to this point have usually been small to medium-sized easel paintings. Practically speaking, they’re Surrealist self-portraits. They’re meant to be seen in person and I don’t make prints of them for sale. I’m constantly trying to capture and display a variety of more or less complex mental and emotional states. I hope to evoke similar feelings in you, if you’re looking at my work, or at least to provoke questions and prompt some introspection. Behind the images are a lot of causes - life events, world events, politics, the environment, relationships - that run the gamut of my own experience and get refracted through my subconscious. I don’t feel any desire to share those in an explicit way. They’re the seeds; the paintings are the flowers. I’m not here to tell a story about my own life. Accordingly, I usually minimize the use of backgrounds and other narrative elements, and paint most of these pieces life-size, in an effort to bring them as much into your space as possible. Art being a constant learning process, I have in my head some upcoming pieces that won’t hew to those guidelines. I guess we’ll see how they work out when they’re finished.
My illustrations, by and large, are similarly developed mostly through internal visualization, but the prompts come from the clients. Mostly they’re album covers for metal bands, so we’ll have a conversation regarding what the album is about, share some visual ideas, and usually I’ll read some lyrics or listen to some of the music. By contrast to my personal work, most of the illustrations have a prominent narrative component. They also give me a chance to play with more overt, less nuanced expressions and body language, more varied color schemes, and things like light effects and architecture that haven’t had much place in my other work. At best, they’re a lot of fun to do. They’re made for print; sometimes they also work well in person, but hanging them somewhere isn’t a primary consideration.
If you’re interested in getting in touch about illustration work, please feel free to do so through the contact form on this site, but be advised that my family is currently in the process of relocating, and that I intend to take some time afterwards for personal work that’s been left to languish far too long.