As an artist, I find it my place to point out things that may not be self-evident. Sometimes I take this seriously, and sometimes it only amplifies the humor and irony I find in life. My artwork reflects this need of mine to peel the onion of existence and find only more layers.

Originally a painter who embraced studio photography and commercialism, I returned to non-photo-based art after being inspired by the new technologies available in computer imaging. This machine, this tool, has tapped my creative core like no other medium.

My work began with a series of faces and skulls that I call Monsters From The Id. There is a wonderful George Pal sci-fi film called Forbidden Planet in which a main character discovered an alien machine that without his knowledge was creating creatures to do the bidding of his own inner jealousies and darkness. Similarly, I found myself with this alien piece of technology and out of my subconscious, like automatic writing, came images of my feelings of joy and disappointments at the time. Also crossed up in these images is influence from the pop Kar Kulture artists: Stanley "Mouse" Miller and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. They created monsters that represented the adolescent angst that all of us felt and released through our hot rod cars and motorcycles: machines of great power that raised us up above the perceived sameness of America in the early 1960s.

The computer became to me one of those hot rods or motorcycles from my past. There was endless tinkering and "speed parts" to be added. The pure joy of technology and the satisfaction of going ever deeper into complex graphics and 3D applications was coupled with my elation of discovery in researching for subject matter. I could go on and on about how I used all this technology, but now I don’t really care if you as a viewer even know that these images were created on a computer. It opens up too many irrelevant questions.

It is just another medium, like paint or chisel and stone, or clay.

Next I became interested in Jungian symbols. The symbols that evoke an emotional reaction in humans because they are ancient and reoccurring. Next, symbols that represent an emotional connection to events in our lives, like love and death. And lastly, just made-up symbols, things that occur to me as symbolic in my life. An example would be the fantasy object being touched by the figure in one of my pieces, The Consequence of Finding One's Creativity, or The Reality of a Summer Day. This object symbolizes the mad, convoluted, sparkling journey your creative muse takes you on.

Many people have asked about the frequent and continued use of skulls in my work. Well, it is a symbol, plain and simple, of death. On one level, it is an image often used in my '60s car culture influences, one of rebellion and fearlessness; but on a deeper level, it is death that pulls at us through life. Death accompanies us and we court it and demand it in the animals and plants we eat and wear and live in. Death brings us life in a balance and flow that is all around us. So my skulls are in a way my everyman, my Willie Lowman, representing all that we are.

In 2004, I moved from a large urban center and the world of design and fashionable things and people, to a rural corner of Wisconsin. Here, I have put to question how we perceive each other. My explorations into how media has defined beauty and how we selfishly project these unfulfillable ideals onto the reality of others, have manifested into a growing body of work which includes the series Angry Little Men, Feral Dumb Men and others.

Angry Little Men examines the countenances and stances of men with an attitude and a grudge. Somehow their due has not been met and they mean to change that very soon. Feral Dumb Men looks at men in pain, with some great, unexplained loss or so in denial that all is well to a fault. Composed in the style of the German Expressionist Film, they are mouth-breathers in a daze, close-up, staring directly at the viewer.

All of my subjects have been stripped of the viewer’s self-imposed tyranny of what is beautiful. One must look at them, in the eye, and see them for who they are.

The myriad of programs I use allows me to draw on all of my various skills, but in a virtual world. In these programs, the artist is presented with virtual similes for sculpting, painting, and the stage. Creating images this way tends to be very complex and multi-layered, but this process reflects the pieces themselves. Digital multi-media. Digital painting.