Neurologists have determined that the old brain holds the seat of our most primal understandings of the world. Goodwill, safety, fear, anxiety, self protection, gravity, sexuality and compulsive behaviors find their basic roots in this lower cerebral core.

I make sculpture and drawings that tap this non-verbal place, provoking emotional, visceral and perceptual responses - an awareness of the sublime. These non-representational works are subtle, rhythmic, and abstract and often manic. The large scale drawings are fields of marks in a variety of linear media, each developed as a system that slowly accumulates to create an abstract matrix of perceptions. Changes in the pressure of my hand, angles of the tool and layering create variations of tone, density, path and frequency within the system.

The sculptural works are also "drawings," usually expansive, three-dimensional works made out of wood, thread and wire. I am interested in the optical and spatial phenomenon that develops in this work, as it spans the outer reaches of our peripheral vision. The works also reference physical systems such as heartbeat, respiration, neural paths and psychological states.

I frequently return to the subtle distinction between drawing as noun and verb as a long held focus in my studio practice. This blurred distinction drives my fascination with an expanded definition of drawing languages and the resurgence of drawing in contemporary art. My collective body of work is an iteration of this language - a reassertion of the age-old desire to understand self in place.

My work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Belger Art Center, Macalester College, North Carolina State University as well as venues in New Zealand, Quebec and Japan. My work is in the permanent collections of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and the Detroit Institute of Art as well as numerous private and public collections.

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