Over the past several years, I have been exploring a variety of different styles, trying to find my own voice, and it seems that they are all coming together in the newest works. This exhibition represents nearly a year's worth of work, and a much longer process of development.

While I do not copy any particular style, it seems fitting to acknowledge that I have been inspired by other artists' works. Perhaps the greatest contributions Cubism has to offer us as artists is the concept of planar analysis: the fracturing of space to reflect a reality based on multiple momentary perceptions. This is of a certainty contained within my newest works, albeit departing representation entirely (well-there are a few drawings buried under the layers - but those can really be of interest only to the artist!) Not to be overlooked in any consideration of Cubism are the contributions of African maskmakers and creators of other totemic sculpture, who have not seen their works as "art" in the sense that we do, but rather as a focal point for spiritual practice. They have simplified curves into planes and abstracted those planes to express a higher emotional/spiritual reality. This seems admirable to me. Pattern and rhythm have an impact on our minds which has a unique capacity to transport us into altered states of consciousness.

I would be remiss in failing to acknowledge my obvious debt to the Abstract Expressionists of America's own history, making the leap beyond representation into pure expression. These influences are tempered by Dada, contemporary aesthetics, and ideas of my own. And I could never paint without music!

The latest pieces have lyrical and expressive lines, or the lines of maps, as their base, visible in the gouged areas. In layers above them, a different rhythm and order is superimposed - the gouged pattern of the wax, the abraded/dissolved patterns in the exterior surface, the grid of the metal leaf or map applications. The metal leaf reflects its surroundings, such that they become a part of the artwork. They are profoundly different in varied lighting conditions and physical surroundings. A variety of layers are juxtaposed, just as we have various layers of thought and emotion flowing concurrently through our minds. The eye goes in and out of the various layers, perceiving them at times as separate, at times as a whole. In the Oroborous pieces, I have the additional content of the pins arranged in a circular order, counterclockwise, one to one hundred. The circle refers to cycles, the numbers, arriving to a perfect 100 as they do, to a sense of completion. The direction refers to reflection on the past, coming around to the present in its completion.

The use of maps in my work, and particularly topographical maps, reflects a concern for, and involvement with, nature, that goes beyond an intellectual stance. Pins, in my idiosyncratic iconography, are repeated to signify the repetition of thoughts, and particularly memories of painful events. The use of pins becomes particularly excruciating in the pieces where the wax is tinted to resemble flesh - the flesh through which a watershed flows. I have chosen maps of places that hold personal significance to me, due to various life events. As artists, we are given the remarkable power to transmute pain into beauty. Some have said that the perception of beauty is rooted in an awareness of our own mortality. Perhaps this is so.

Abandoning representation and embracing beauty are rooted in my personal spiritual growth. Representation has to do with clinging to the material; my departure from it is an attempt to release myself and the viewer from that. Embracing beauty, a rather controversial stance in the contemporary art community, has to do with my recognition that it is my joy and duty to provide whatever meaning and beauty I can to others, with whatever I have to offer.

Partial installation view: