ARTIST STATEMENT​​

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As a photographer, I am interested in lived-in settings, and utilizing foreground elements, shadows, lines, and a subject's gaze to make evocative, even haunting art. Much of my work is an exploration and expression of the human condition, spirituality, and my connection to the natural world. An avid traveler and nature lover, I often photograph people, animals, and places from my travels.

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Favoring portrait and street photography, and shooting almost exclusively using natural light, my work is a combination of directed image creation, and photographing candid moments. This blend of controlled art making with capturing the unplanned allows me to remain a careful observer in close connection with the world, and my instincts. I prefer 35mm film, but also shoot digitally, sometimes presenting my photographs completely unedited, and other times employing digital manipulation to create a vintage, saturnine, and at times surrealist feel.

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I paint under the moniker Dagu, the name I called myself as a child, to reference a joyful, unselfconscious, childlike state of art creation, and a reminder of the teachings I've received in adulthood related to the value of play. This is a departure from my photography, which is serious in nature, both in terms of process and tone.

 

Another way I adhere to my painting philosophy is to intentionally work in a variety of styles, rejecting external pressures or self-imposed limitations based on rigid views of cohesion. ​My paintings are unified by my use of expressive abstraction, striking color, various layers of underpaintings, bold outlines, simplified human forms, and emphasis on thick paint and textures. As with my photography, I work intuitively, am drawn to bodies and nature as subjects, and often create images of obscured faces.