Early Work
Early Work: 1977-82
Variable dimensions Work on paper During my time as an undergraduate in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, my focus was on figurative imagery. My university concentration was painting and drawing with an emphasis on life drawing, though I also learned photography and lithography. I supplemented life drawing with old family photos—a common source among my cohort of young artists trying to make sense how to make art. For various bodies of work, I explored distortion and abstraction, disassembling the figure, sometime to the point where an obvious figure-ground relationship was lost. At various points, I was pulled back into a more complete realism as I encountered peers, professors and other viewers who interpreted the fragmented figures as the embodiment or expression of a violent impulse toward people, which was never my intention. Toward the end of my time in Austin, some classmates in the painting department began to build painted constructions and installations. Their work inspired me to try the same -- see the website section "Waterbed Motel," "True Romance," and "Romantic Triangle" -- and set me on a path away from two-dimensional works that I pursued during graduate school and beyond. |
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