Artist Statement

I work in music, theater, literature and film, diverse forms that offer performative contributions to the visual arts. Visual art is a lifelong tonic. Drawing and painting refresh and simplify. Drawings strip away the intermediaries of performers, stages, technology and words, and reveal my artistic focus: the discerning recreation of objects in this world that depict original innocence. The current work–Still Lives: Three Flowers from My Garden, Alive Then Lost, but with Me, Still–is a set of 5 drawings forming a cross. The vertical axis of the cross is anchored by a self-portrait, a drawing based on a 1985 portrait by photographer, Mark A. Vieira. The horizontal axis is formed by portraits of three intimates now deceased from AIDS. (From left to right: Lee, 1983; Christopher, 1988 and Henk 1984.) The vertical axis is capped by a 2020 self-portrait.