My artwork concentrates on New York City and its predominantly architectural landscape. I look at my environment and respond to it using different creative mediums. All of my paintings, drawings, photographs and videos reveal geometrical forms, which are a significant part of New York City's urban landscape. Whether intricate, repetitious, minimal, large, small, colorful, new and shiny, old and decaying, the features of architectural structures permeate my work. The depictions as well as the materials and processes I use speak about my extensive and ever-changing subject matter while introducing both representational and abstract concepts.

I have always been intrigued by New York City's environment. Its streets, homes, factories, offices and architectural marvels seem beyond calculation and provide endless exploration. The abundance of communities and histories comprise a diversity of identities. It is constantly transforming and is the product of continuous deliberation over development and the environment. New York's shifting landscape might be a reason I feel compelled to record and preserve its character.

Every medium I have worked with has been a means to document as well as embellish the distinctiveness of each setting. For instance I utilize alternative photo processes such as platinum printing and pinhole cameras, as well as a technique of multi-layering acrylic over oil paints. While I have used traditional materials for my drawings, the pictures are somewhat unconventional, combining disparate locations or including transformations from photorealistic architecture to abstract forms and designs.

Process and technique have consistently been important to my ideals as an artist. I think that an artist should be concerned with producing work that is both skillfully crafted and which expresses or communicates ideas about modern times that can be understood. I also believe that significant artwork reflects a multitude of people and presents a pattern of life which is enduring. I aspire to create work that is appreciated for both a level of technical accomplishment and insightful value.

Hopefully my work engages people and produces thoughts about New York City and ideas about urban man-made environments in general. Large architectural structures have been a considerable part of my subject matter. I frequently choose them because I believe they possess an attractive geometric aesthetic, and because I have a multifaceted response to them. While they are often notable feats of human engineering and production, artificial structures of great stature also prompt discouragement about the natural environment.

My paintings communicate this response. The rectilinear grid represents architectural forms and is consistent in each of my paintings. Some are composed with high (80"-90"), vertically reaching grid-like fields to create the perception of a towering edifice. These representations of buildings are sometimes opposite to open areas that correspond to sky. Others are more abstract, stretching horizontally. The process of using acrylic over oil paint to create these fields and grids is of consequence. Layering acrylic over oil develops a surface to the canvas that splinters or cracks. The interior layers of paint are visible through the top layer, creating another dimension of color. Color is a method in which I try to instill sensation. The color can obviously help craft a vibrant, optimistic, upbeat or dark, gloomy, listless picture. The cracked surface that occurs from the instinctive reaction between the oil and water based acrylic paints also suggests the look of corrosion. The decayed appearance of the subjects may incite a need for urban renewal. Hopefully it invites thoughts about the permanence of these structures and the potential effect of enduring human presence in the natural world.

Dominating architectural forms are a focus in my photography as well. One of my recently completed artworks is a digitally printed 48" x 36" color photograph. The photograph was not captured using a digital camera but with a pinhole camera on Polaroid film. The initial 4.5" x 3.5" Polaroid was scanned, enlarged using Photoshop, and then digitally printed. The pinhole camera is technologically primitive and requires long exposures in order to obtain enough light. During the extended exposure, objects and light within the camera's view may shift. This movement frequently gives pinhole images a distinctive, hazy or eerie characteristic. While depending on the body of the camera box, pinhole cameras invariably achieve wide-angle views, which can suit certain subjects or landscapes.

This particular photograph depicts a wide and roughly 20-story tall, utilitarian apartment building in Coney Island. Between the building and the street lies an unusually large lawn area. This area created a favorable distance for a wide-angle photograph to capture a large portion of building. The large size print attempts to show off the considerable scale of the building, and the experience of being in the actual space. The height of the building is left to the viewer's imagination as the building continues to ascend beyond the top of the photograph's frame. I felt the location was an aesthetically significant demonstration of the two well-defined vertical and horizontal planes and the perpendicular meeting of the building and the land. I hope that the photograph's immense scale and eerie atmosphere provokes some thought about the interaction or relationship of its subjects and specifically what type of outlook the future holds involving even the most practical or basic architectural needs.

I have also used the relationship or opposition between different architectural structures to address this theme in my drawings. In one example the illustration of an old wooden Victorian style house found in Ditmas Park is seen in the foreground while an expansive glass office building (based on a building actually located on 6th avenue in Manhattan) is drawn in the background. Their hypothetical occurrence in the same neighborhood prompts examination about the character and relationship of architectural forms, as well as the possibly of development or displacement.

I believe my upbringing has played a part in my artistic practice. Growing up in SoHo in the 1980's I saw the transformation of a neighborhood from industrial to commercial and residential. This experience is manifested in my work in the form of a nostalgic outlook towards the city's and my own history. My parents' house also affected me in a similar way. Built in 1819 the house has a history, which pre-dates SoHo's. The house was even designated a landmark in 1989 by New York's Landmarks Preservation Foundation which noted the buildings' Flemish bond brickwork and wrought iron stoop railing as well as the lands previous life as part of a 17th century farm owned by Peter Bayard, a brother-in-law of Peter Stuyvesant. My own bedroom was made up of hardwood floors, a tin ceiling, and even an exposed brick wall. This wall eventually became my first canvas.

SoHo offered an informal education in art. From a young age, my father exposed me to contemporary art by taking me to galleries, and introducing me to his artist-clients such as Judy Pfaff and Jeff Koons. My official education started and continued through high school at Friends Seminary, a Quaker school, on 16th Street in Manhattan. Daily school assemblies were an impressionable experience. There the school encouraged contemplation and self-expression in a historic 150 year-old meetinghouse. The space and architectural design of the meetinghouse, founded on principles of simplicity and symmetry, was somewhat impacting as well.

My desire to be in an urban environment influenced my choice to attend Trinity College in Hartford. There, my art background led me to study art history. A lot of my time at Trinity was spent in the painting studio as well as being a Disc Jockey at the college radio station. Hip Hop music was and still is of particular interest to me. Not only is it a musical genre, which grew from the urban psyche but is formed from an interest in the history of music. The technique of sampling involves layering sounds taken from obscure or forgotten music. The process of searching through old records and bringing out short portions of music seems to go hand in hand with a concept of abstraction and a technique of layering paint which tries to reveal times gone past. The practice of looping samples I feel is also visually connected with the preponderance of repetitive patterns or pervasiveness of grid-like geometrical forms in my images.

The work of artist William T. Williams has influenced me. Williams' paintings have always interested me for technical as well as aesthetic reasons. I continually admire the texture and physicality of the surface that several layers of paint generate in his work. Formally, his compositions are typically brightly colored and arranged with an abstract geometry. I have always thought these geometric arrangements and loud colors were visual representations of rhythm and sound found in music, and Williams' own words offer access to this interpretation. Williams' characterization of his own work not only involves a language of music but specifically jazz music. My paintings have a similar aesthetic and technical style, comprising layers of cracked surfaces of paint, lots of color, and arrangements of rectilinear geometrical patterns.

One of my paintings I feel exemplifies some of the themes I have discussed is entitled "Bubble gum" from 2008. I chose the title because of its color, which includes pink and purple, which reminded me of bubble gum. I felt this title also had substance because of my interest in hip-hop, sampling, and record collecting. The title refers to the use of 9th Creation's 1975 funk song entitled "Bubble gum" by hip-hop artists The Artifacts in their 1994 song "wrong side of da tracks". It is likely a song and artist I never would have heard of had it not been sampled by The Artifacts. In this way hip-hop production has informed me and brought to light countless songs and artists that now seem dated with the passing of time.

These concepts of history and urbanity have manifested in my work. While it is particularly visible in the multi-layered texture and aged look of the cracked paint it can be seen in platinum prints, or the faded appearance of pinhole images.