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I began painting wall-sized murals on vinyl in 2001, as an attempt to register my shock and sorrow at a world inflicted by war, ethnic struggles, and global unrest. The murals mix techniques used in historical mural painting with the large scale and powerful format of billboard advertising.
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Civilization III, 2005 mixed media in cast acrylic
In addition to murals, I have been exploring related ideas through video, small works on paper, and various sculptures which also feature deer.
The medium of collage is also an important element in my work, and I have made use of more complex collage in a series of three dimensional sculptures (Civilization), which contain human and environmental elements in aquariums of cast acrylic resin, depicting the clash between the natural world and the manmade.
These smaller sculptures have recently taken on a new role by serving as studies for a large-scale installation work comprised of life-sized deer sculptures made of recycled materials.
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Although these first murals were inspired by my experience surviving and observing the calamities brought on by the present world of conflict, including the Holocaust, September 11th, and the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, they are also a means by which I had hoped to call attention to the relationships between progress and destruction throughout history.
As I built upon these murals over the years, I found that the relationships I observed proved relevant not only to human conflict, but to environmental concerns, prompting me to create a body of work in response to the intrusive impact that man’s modern advance has had on the natural habitats of other species.
I started working with deer imagery during a residency at Cooper Union in 2005, combining deer in murals such as Deer Watch and Trauma with scientific and terrorist subject matter used in earlier work.
Mixed Paper Deer Sculpture, 2008
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