Statement

1986… I left my settled life in MPLS and moved to Asia. I went to charge up my life with experiences not available in the suburbs of the US. I wanted to gain knowledge of how humanity had existed in past… elsewhere… in other languages and at a different pace… Human experience organized differently, in different spaces. and less structured. I was seeking a richer understanding of human culture. I wanted tastes, smells, sounds… odd friendships, travel in the rough… heat, cold, danger, love, loneliness… the lot. If surrealism depended on dreams and automatic creativity I needed a deep well from which to draw ideas and images. Those years in Asia provided an ample source for my work. They crafted a human out of me and imbued me with the dreamy beauty of life… of the universe.   

2021… Contemporary human culture is perceived by many to be dystopian… a discontinuity between the person and their world, their truth, and their happiness. We have been feeling isolated since long before Covid. We experience our modern lives much like surreal art; days and years unfolding in dreamlike bubbles. Increasingly our perceptions are automatically created with Algorithms forming our worldview and with media crafting a reality derived from what we watch but do not witness. Experience seems fragmentary. This is classic surrealism. As a human, an artist, and a surrealist I seek insight into ways to knit the dissolving dystopia back into a coherent whole… Is this possible?