The images begin as larger drawings that derive either from my observations of the turbulent emotional landscape I have witnessed during the past two years, or from canonical images that ring germane—or both. The drawings are from life and vary in scale from eight inches to eight feet. I crop the drawing to highlight a crucial moment or passage, transfer it a marble slab and then carve the relief by hand. Sometimes I crop the image while it is still on paper and the drawings are usually reiterated several times, distilling them to the essential. Oftentimes, I trim the actual slab either during the carving process or even after I had thought the piece complete. In any case, by orphaning the image from its context, it becomes a fragment, full of negative spaces and pathways for the imagination.

The narratives are intended to be ambiguous and my cropping decisions reflect the limitations of perception. We rarely know all of the facts in any given situation, yet our hearts are very keen to atmosphere and tone. These works are more concerned with emotional consequences than with specific events. Causations can only be guessed and we rarely have the certainty we crave. Most of what we see is a glimpse; the rest is the domain of imagination.

I initially chose to work in bas relief because its vocabulary and challenges match those of my style of drawing but my interest endures because of the stone’s amazingly dynamic relationship to light. The translucent marble redistributes ambient light in a way that is simply magical. Furthermore, as lighting conditions change, the images shift and disappear in a way quite akin to the manner of our memories. This ephemerality complements well the fragmentation of experience that is central to this body of work and is indeed a long-running theme throughout my work.