Sculpture to me has always been concerned with boundaries of the material body. Form is what makes one gravitate to the emotional states of utopia. The ideology behind sculpture of the past in world history has shown ecstatic states of sexuality, saintly visions of Nirvana, ancient wisdom, mythology, the archetypal angel, and the creation of gods. In my sculpture I want the viewer to see creation and destruction all in the same work of art. Art is how the artist deifies his/her existence; it is a way of making oneself immortal. It is God-like.

Mythological Modernism, Primal Modern, Ancient Contemporary. "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." Carl Jung — Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1962. I believe to fully understand ourselves, modern man must make a connection with ancient man. In Riane Eisler’s book, The Chalice and the Blade, she writes, “An important lesson to be learned from the rise of modern totalitarianism is that it can be a fatal error to under estimate the power of myth. The human psyche seems to have a built-in need for a system of stories and symbols that “reveal” to us the order of the universe and tell us what our place within it is. It is a hunger for meaning and purpose seemingly beyond the power of any rationalistic or logical system to provide.” Art must have a purpose. I want to make art that renders to us the experience of the true transcendence in our lives. Once this is communicated, our eyes will be opened to the image of the universe. The idea, behind the “Primal Modern” or “Ancient Contemporary” theme in my work is to draw a parallel to the consciousness of the past, and let it marry the technology of the present. What we need in the neo-consciousness of culture, is a balance with nature. Let this be our dream. Let this be our sacred place. To quote Joseph Campbell, “Every sacred place is the place where eternity shines through time.” Nirvana will come from the soul of man, through our creations, through our falling and rising, through the darkness and the light.

The process of painting for me is about transcendence. I believe the painting itself is the medium between us and the realm of Beauty.

This process for me is a spontaneous, induced, gestured, and energized dance. It is ceremonial. A symbiotic relationship of reciprocity happens between me and the piece. I initiate the creation of the painting. I give to it birth. The work then helps to guide me as a give and take happens. I believe to have an immaculate and strong painting; it has to have a history. The painting has to have a birth/death/rebirth. I achieve this by purposefully over-working the painting. There is a desire to destroy it, to change the piece somewhere in the cycle of its creation. I am then forced to pull the piece back, to resurrect it. The painting is physically brought back from the ashes like the Phoenix.

French sociologist Michel Maffesoli was the first to use the term neotribalism in a scholarly context. He predicted that as the culture and institutions of modernism declined, societies would embrace nostalgia and look to the organizational principles of the distant past for guidance, and that therefore the post-modern era would be the era of neotribalism.

This idea, the concept of “Neotribalism” is to have work that attempts to draw together prominent and formal elements of ritual from past culture. I believe in a reintroduction to using art for mythic purposes. In our day and age, the artist is an illuminator. We can act as shaman to bridge the metaphysical world of the “sacred space”. In Theory of the Forms, Plato states “Beauty transcends the world of sense experience”, which means that the experience of beauty is unlike what we would today describe as the aesthetic experience. Beauty and ritual both transport the person to another place and time. My art deals with the role of being a “guide” for modern culture, myself, I am a medium for spirit to pass through. My work is to be seen as a rite of passage from past to present.

My use of ancient Sumerian Cuneiform is to show that prior to current times, ancient art was created by the tribal shamans or master artists skilled in symbols, materials and sacred items. Francoise Choay states “Indeed modern shamanistic practice demonstrates that almost all objects are imbued animalistically with special powers, meaning, spirituality, and presence. That the interpretation of the world around us requires a deep knowledge of hidden symbols and meanings, as well as a vast knowledge of matters spiritual, sacred, profane, secular, tribal, cultural, etc. In much the same, we as artists require these same ways of seeing -- although probably not to anywhere such a deep extent.”